Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo’s “…more to come” re­frain dur­ing his 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion could al­so in­clude “not yet.” “Bet­ter days are com­ing,” but it feels like they are “not yet” here.

This is the predica­ment the Gov­ern­ment faces with an in­creas­ing­ly cyn­i­cal and de­mand­ing cit­i­zen­ry. Those with rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a plat­form can “squeak” and maybe get the “grease” but de­pend­ing on how much they need, they will have to squeak a lot more.

The mass trade union demon­stra­tion, which was planned for last Fri­day, was post­poned out of re­spect for Dr Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co’s state-as­sist­ed fu­ner­al. The demon­stra­tion will now be held on Oc­to­ber 30.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader de­liv­ered her bud­get re­sponse be­fore Spar­row’s fu­ner­al.

Per­haps per­mis­sion could have been sought from the House Speak­er to post­pone it as well, as the ho­n­our­ing of Spar­row would have in­ad­ver­tent­ly stolen some of MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’ thun­der.

Cit­i­zens zoomed in on the bud­get’s $250 month­ly in­crease in Se­nior Cit­i­zens’, Pub­lic As­sis­tance, and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grants.

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert point­ed out that the $5,500 cap on the se­nior cit­i­zens’ grant re­mains, so those al­ready re­ceiv­ing the NIB pen­sion and the grant at that cap will not ben­e­fit.

How many cit­i­zens will ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit from the bump to $3,750, though? Those in need will def­i­nite­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it.

An­oth­er mea­sure met with less en­thu­si­asm was the pro­pos­al to ap­ply VAT on for­eign dig­i­tal ser­vices. So cit­i­zens’ month­ly sub­scrip­tions to stream­ing ser­vices like Net­flix could move from US$17 to about US$20 if providers pass the tax on.

This has been the prac­tice in oth­er coun­tries, so it will be more ex­pen­sive to “Net­flix and chill” from March 1st next year. Most users will pay, but some may switch to ca­ble or re­vert to free-to-air lo­cal sta­tions.

The deficit is pro­ject­ed to shrink from TT$7 bil­lion to TT$3.64 bil­lion, with rev­enue in­creas­ing by TT$5.5 bil­lion.

Will we earn bet­ter than the as­sump­tions of US$77 per bar­rel of oil and US$5 per MMB­tu for nat­ur­al gas?

The en­er­gy ac­cel­er­a­tor hub has con­tributed to the ad­vance­ment of sev­er­al projects, cre­at­ing the ex­pec­ta­tion that pro­duc­tion and rev­enue gen­er­a­tion will oc­cur through­out 2027 and that mo­men­tum will build through the end of the year.

Will cap­i­tal rev­enue be gen­er­at­ed through di­vest­ment, though? PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an­nounced that Na­tion­al Quar­ries Ltd, Hilton Trinidad, and Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in To­ba­go will be of­floaded.

Will Lake As­phalt and LABID­CO be next? Na­tion­al her­itage, cul­ture and his­to­ry notwith­stand­ing, why don’t state boards gen­er­ate the kind of prof­itabil­i­ty that pri­vate en­ter­pris­es do? In many cas­es, state com­pa­nies could lever­age their na­tion­al iden­ti­ty to stim­u­late in­ter­est and pa­tron­age.

If the com­pa­nies have been treat­ed like feed­ing troughs rather than prof­it-mak­ing busi­ness­es, they will be­come bur­dens that do not con­tribute to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment needs to iden­ti­fy the ones that are most “Trin­bag­on­ian,” main­tain their strate­gic val­ue, and keep them op­er­a­tional. Their lead­er­ship should keep them prof­itable as well.

At least a cou­ple hun­dred cit­i­zens in­di­cat­ed their sup­port to me for the di­vest­ment of state com­pa­nies that can­not ex­tri­cate them­selves from bank­rupt­cy.

I was asked if I sup­port­ed the clo­sure of Petrotrin. I nev­er did.

How­ev­er, I sup­port­ed its pri­vati­sa­tion when it be­came too un­wieldy for the gov­ern­ment to man­age.

A pri­va­tised com­pa­ny is bet­ter than a per­ma­nent­ly closed one.

Hav­ing been moth­balled for al­most a decade, will US$1 bil­lion be enough to restart? Who will ac­tu­al­ly get it done? Oan­do, Pa­tri­ot­ic, Jin­dal, iN­ca, or CRO? Oth­ers? Where will the crude oil come from? Guyana? Venezuela? Suri­name? Else­where?

Our for­eign pol­i­cy must al­ways seek to sit­u­ate us in the most ad­van­ta­geous cir­cum­stances.

The day af­ter the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar of­fi­cial­ly opened the new $1.2 bil­lion East Ter­mi­nal of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point.

She paid homage to the man af­ter whom she named it in 2011, cred­it­ing him for giv­ing her po­lit­i­cal life in the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine was beam­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny and al­so gave cred­it to for­mer PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley, whom he in­vit­ed. For­mer PM Row­ley (whom PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred to as “for­mer for­mer…”) lat­er post­ed that the “PNM BUILT IT…Now you try­ing to tief cred­it for it…,” as he ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Au­gus­tine of ob­struct­ing its con­struc­tion when he was prime nin­is­ter.

There are two plaques at the air­port, one for “prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion of the con­struc­tion of the new ter­mi­nal” by Row­ley and an­oth­er for the “open­ing of the new ter­mi­nal” by Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Can we cel­e­brate it as group work in­stead of be­ing ex­clu­sion­ary?

Ahead of next year’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, it has been re­port­ed that the bud­gets for PNM-con­trolled mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions have been slashed, while those for UNC-con­trolled ones have re­mained steady, if not in­creased.

Is this a mat­ter of ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion? As an op­po­si­tion UNC MP, I com­plained ad nau­se­am about the un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources, as we suf­fered for ten years to get ba­sic main­te­nance work done in our con­stituen­cies.

Is the shoe on the oth­er foot now?

Since 2010, I have pro­posed a $50 mil­lion De­vel­op­ment Fund for each con­stituen­cy to fund the con­struc­tion or re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and drains, as well as oth­er crit­i­cal main­te­nance work.

Lo­calised land­lord and Cor­po­rate tax­es could pro­vide some of the fi­nanc­ing. This could shift the fo­cus back to the needs of the peo­ple, rather than to whichev­er par­ty con­trols the cor­po­ra­tion.