All suc­cess­ful coun­tries have an ef­fi­cient pub­lic ser­vice. Con­verse­ly, no coun­try will be suc­cess­ful if it does not have an ef­fi­cient pub­lic ser­vice. The ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of a coun­try’s pub­lic sec­tor are keys to the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of de­vel­op­ment projects and are im­por­tant to the smooth run­ning of any coun­try.

It fol­lows that coun­tries should strive to mea­sure and im­prove the per­for­mance of their pub­lic ser­vice. There should be ob­jec­tive mea­sures (met­rics) to eval­u­ate civ­il ser­vice per­for­mance and iden­ti­fy im­prove­ment ar­eas.

My com­ment in last week’s ar­ti­cle on the 120th re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion, “It makes no re­form, no struc­tur­al change, or im­prove­ment in the wider pub­lic ser­vice,” was not in­tend­ed to sug­gest ei­ther that the SRC had the pow­er to im­ple­ment or sug­gest the need for pub­lic ser­vice re­form.

The SRC, like oth­er com­mis­sions es­tab­lished by the Con­sti­tu­tion, can on­ly do what it is em­pow­ered to do; that is, re­view salaries un­der its purview and make rec­om­men­da­tions. I meant to say that re­form and struc­tur­al change in the civ­il ser­vice are long out­stand­ing and should hap­pen along­side or be­fore any changes in the re­mu­ner­a­tion struc­ture.

It is worth not­ing that the SRC’s 120th Re­port is the cul­mi­na­tion of a nine-year ef­fort to com­plete a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise for the 200-plus per­son­nel who fall with­in its am­bit. It is a much small­er group than the 35,000-plus who form the back­bone of the civ­il ser­vice.

The last full job eval­u­a­tion for the civ­il ser­vice was com­plet­ed in 1965 or there­abouts. There have been sev­er­al at­tempts to com­plete a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise for this larg­er group. Each at­tempt has failed for many dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer is in the un­en­vi­able po­si­tion of ne­go­ti­at­ing blan­ket in­creas­es for all staff in dif­fer­ent bar­gain­ing units where job clas­si­fi­ca­tions do not di­rect­ly match changed work­place prac­tices. The fact that the job eval­u­a­tion has been com­plet­ed for the small­er group (al­beit af­ter nine years) has cre­at­ed a lop­sided com­par­i­son be­tween the salary rec­om­men­da­tions of the SRC with those of dif­fer­ent civ­il ser­vice bar­gain­ing units cur­rent­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO.

Every­one sees things from a self-in­ter­est­ed point. Peo­ple in the am­bit of the SRC would com­plain that they have not had salary in­creas­es for nine years or more. They are not alone in that re­gard. Pub­lic ser­vants can say the same thing, as will many peo­ple in the pri­vate sec­tor with much less job se­cu­ri­ty or pen­sion en­ti­tle­ments.

De­spite Min­is­ter Im­bert’s “good news,” the econ­o­my’s per­for­mance since 2014 has been anaemic. Cit­i­zens ex­pect their eco­nom­ic pain will be shared by the lead­ers who ask them to put their shoul­ders to the wheel. That is the key rea­son for the neg­a­tive feed­back on Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion to ac­cept the SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tions.

These are dif­fi­cult times, and gov­ern­ments are elect­ed to make re­spon­si­ble de­ci­sions prompt­ly, not kick the can down the road. The longer the de­lay, the more un­palat­able the de­ci­sion, as the ac­tion to re­store sta­bil­i­ty must be even stronger.

Many im­por­tant na­tion­al de­ci­sions are out­stand­ing. TTEC op­er­ates at a loss. It can­not pay its bills to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny for gas that it re­ceives at un­der­val­ue, nor can it pay salary in­creas­es to its em­ploy­ees. Its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion is com­pound­ed by the fact that gov­ern­ment min­istries and as­so­ci­at­ed en­ti­ties owe mil­lions.

WASA is in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion. Both in­sti­tu­tions re­quire rate in­creas­es to sur­vive. The longer the de­lay, the big­ger the rate in­crease re­quired to re­store in­sti­tu­tion­al bal­ance and the greater the im­pact on ratepay­ers.

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board is sell­ing as­sets to pay its pen­sion oblig­a­tions be­cause the coun­try is now age­ing. A de­ci­sion to in­crease the re­tire­ment age along with oth­er mea­sures is a no-brain­er. We do not need an­oth­er ac­tu­ar­i­al re­port to re­peat the same rec­om­men­da­tions.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the back­log in VAT re­funds when last dis­closed was $6.7 bil­lion. This means the fis­cal deficit and the na­tion­al debt are un­der­stat­ed, and the rev­enue is over­stat­ed. Pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions are big­ger than the gov­ern­ment’s ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er.

The for­eign ex­change po­si­tion is sim­i­lar. The man­aged float­ing rate sys­tem func­tioned well for 23 years, al­low­ing the TT to US dol­lar ex­change rate to de­pre­ci­ate al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly. By mov­ing to a fixed peg in 2016, the of­fi­cial rate and the un­of­fi­cial mar­ket rate have di­verged.

Mar­ket ac­tors are los­ing con­fi­dence in the bank­ing sec­tor to de­liv­er an ad­e­quate forex flow. This is lead­ing to hoard­ing and a high­er par­al­lel mar­ket rate. This is the nat­ur­al re­sult of at­tempt­ing to con­trol the mar­ket through ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sures rather than mar­ket ad­just­ments that ei­ther in­crease sup­ply or re­duce de­mand.

The longer this ap­proach per­sists, the greater the risk that this rate dis­par­i­ty will widen, vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­tee­ing an even­tu­al de­val­u­a­tion. Each of the ex­am­ples quot­ed above re­quires ur­gent ac­tion. The longer those ac­tions are de­layed, the more cit­i­zens be­come at­tached to the sta­tus quo. Any ad­just­ment will be more un­pleas­ant, dif­fi­cult, and ul­ti­mate­ly dis­rup­tive.

The longer the de­lay, the greater the risk of mak­ing a bad de­ci­sion. Right now all T&T’s eggs are placed in a bas­ket la­belled 2027. What will hap­pen if the gas price is low­er than ex­pect­ed, or gas pro­duc­tion de­clines?