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Windows of opportunity

By George Alleyne, www.newsday.co.tt

It appears that the only group in Trinidad and Tobago which never agonised over the harsh conditionalities imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) must have been the 1995-2001 United National Congress. When this country, reeling from the sharp drop in international crude oil prices to below US$9 a barrel sought IMF assistance on debt rescheduling everyone suffered except apparently the UNC.

How else can anyone explain the debt burden of more than $6 billion left by the UNC, followed by the $1 billion plus it spent in the last three months it was in power?

Yet, clearly, the IMF conditionalities, which the country had to endure because the international lending agency had the power of the purse, meant nothing to the UNC Government. The debt relief from the debt rescheduling had amounted to US$776 million, which at the time with an exchange rate of TT$4.25 to US$1 translated into TT$3.298 billion. (Financing requirements were estimated at US$4.38 billion for the period 1989-1997, or TT$18.615 billion!)

Had this country given the United National Congress a further five years in Office, with the reported level of corruption, it would have not only been in the clutches of the IMF, but would have had to return to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as well for a Compensatory Financing Facility, along with a Standby Agreement et cetera et cetera.

Those who listened to the Budget presentation, and for whom the IMF nightmare is only yesterday’s news, must have wondered at the cynicism of the former Administration.

Almost any defining of a Budget presentation tends to be selective. The young in the job market are likely to be interested in tax reduction; opportunities for skills development and/or education advance, and with these a chance at upward mobility; tax rebates on housing, signals of a possible reduction in the cost of living, and an indication of job creation strategies.

The over 60s and those about to retire think about Pensions, whose purchasing power is somewhat below what they once earned, or about to say farewell to; wonder if the Budget would provide for expanded public hospital and dispensary facilities, or at least cheaper medicine, a lower cost of living.

Minister of Finance, Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s 2002/2003 Budget presentation eased the minds of the young and not so young on all of the above and yet more. Retirees, who were contributors to National Insurance, are looking forward to receiving National Insurance benefits, from next year, equal to those received by Old Age pensioners, or in the order of $1000 a month.

This, in addition, to their pension.

I had hoped that the Finance Minister would have announced the start of a contributory Pension Scheme for Government monthly paid officers, instead of the present non contributory system.

A contributory Pension Scheme would bring retired public servants better retirement benefits, while at the same time releasing, eventually, billions of dollars of Government funds for other applications.

Three of the items presented by Manning were of special interest to me — the planned establishing of the University of Trinidad and Tobago; allowing cane farmers to be the producers of sugar cane, and the development of niche markets for specialty sugars, windows of opportunity to add value to our sugar industry.

Late Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams, had first raised the idea of a University of Trinidad at a dinner hosted by the Shipping Association of Trinidad and Tobago on the first Friday in November, 1957.

I had approached him, after his address and asked him to expand on it, particularly as was then being put forward by Dr Williams, the proposed University would have replaced the University of the West Indies. Manning’s approach sees it as complementing the work of UWI, a fundamental difference. Williams was unnecessarily abrupt, telling me that everything about the then proposed University was contained in his speech, which, incidentally, was not so and Williams knew that I would have known this since I had a copy of his address in my hand.

But Dr Williams was apparently still smarting from my then recent public exposure, in the Trinidad Guardian, of State corruption involving one of his Cabinet Ministers, and this only a little more than a year after the People’s National Movement had come into Office. But I have strayed.

I have, repeatedly, during the past two years or so, in my Column in Newsday, urged the use of cane farmers as principals of sugar cane production in Trinidad, as well as the seeking of niche markets in the United Kingdom for specialty sugars. Barbados, for example, produces some 4,000 tonnes of direct consumption brown sugar, yellow crystal type, for a niche market in the UK, selling it at approximately US$800 a tonne. Any specialty sugars we should develop, should not be limited to the UK. Instead, we should seek to develop niche markets in Europe, the United States and Japan.

But that is not the only way that the country can add value to its sugar and its sugar cane industry. Value can be added through the development and marketing of special quality rums, as do Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica. Now on to the Budget debate.

Trinidad and Tobago News

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