Imbert's reality distortion field

Paolo Kernahan

FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert, as he has done in several budget presentations before, claimed credit for “turning the economy” around. At this point, the economy is practically a whirling dervish – vows of poverty and austerity included.

In a five-hour plus paean to PNM supremacy and excellence, Imbert’s upbeat economic prognostication was the sweet to the bitter caraille his boss force-fed the population.

PM Rowley, in the days preceding the budget presentation, warned us to buckle up. Conditions will get tough (tougher?) and remain so until 2027. Imbert’s spin was to be expected. The budget has always been a political manifesto and not a fiscal and economic policy statement. There will be time enough for truth when the PNM returns to office after the next election. This much is assured.

Still, Imbert’s vigorous back-patting clashed with his ominous foreshadowing in an affidavit before the court in favour of the Revenue Authority. “The next three years will be very challenging from a revenue perspective.” “The fall in oil and gas has a profound impact on the country’s petroleum revenues.”

That was the same person who took credit for astute stewardship of the economy that saw an increase in revenues. “Revenue in 2023 was six billion more, or 13 per cent more than in 2019…notwithstanding falling prices for oil and gas.”

The devil, as they say, is in the details – which we did not get even after five hours. In fairness to Imbert, maintaining the illusion of competence requires a tremendous amount of dark energy. Where did Imbert’s revenue come from?

In the same affidavit earlier this year, the minister said, “The Government, over the past 15 years, has maintained and increased expenditure through increased and maintained borrowings. Such borrowings are often from foreign lenders. This hurts our foreign reserve balances and import cover.”

How much of the revenue is borrowed money? As it stands now, our external debt hovers just above US$5 billion. This Government has always peddled the notion that foreign exchange shortages are owed largely to profligate credit card expenditure by Trinis with pampered tastes.

Wedged into the bloated presentation was a repeated boast that the Government hasn’t taken the nation to the IMF. Waving this over your head as an accomplishment is akin to a perpetually single man saying, “You will never catch me in Villa though!”

For all of Imbert’s hat-tipping to the Prime Minister and his government, many citizens live outside the parameters of his reality distortion field. Here’s what they endure every day:

Dramatically increased transportation costs for the commute to work and to send children to school. High food prices which increase from one week to the next. Increasing utility costs. Crumbling infrastructure, notwithstanding claims of increased expenditure.

A soaring cost of living far exceeding generally stagnant wages. The unremitting crime that carries its own financial weight as well as the ultimate price. A prolonged foreign exchange drought starving small and medium-sized businesses – major drivers of economic growth. Scant job opportunities for young people.

This is the world beyond the limited radius of Imbert’s bubble.

We’re told to hold out hope for salvation in three years – the cross-border gas deal. The Government is pinning economic revival on the Dragon gas project which teeters on a geopolitical knife edge. Countless variables and grave risks define Dragon.

The idea of hitching our futures to a volatile regime locked in a cold war with the US who, with the stroke of a pen, can wipe away the promise of any cross-border deliverance seems like gross negligence.

In a post-bloviating budget panel discussion, Minister of Energy and etceteras Stuart Young invoked a ubiquitous false narrative. In evangelising the pre-eminence of the energy sector, Young said tourism income simply cannot match the revenues provided by oil and gas.

The minister won’t find a single person on these islands who has implied that tourism should usurp the role of the energy sector. Nowhere has this been said by any sane person.

The idea of economic diversification has always hinged on the aggressive development of non-energy sectors to work alongside oil and gas to sustain maximum revenues and foreign exchange earnings.

As CEO of the Arthur Lok Jack School of Business and former finance minister Mariano Browne pointed out on the same panel discussion, the problem isn’t the vision – it’s the execution.

Signs of the Government’s stellar management of the economy on the ground simply aren’t there. But, if you squint hard enough, maybe you’ll see what Imbert wants you to see.