PNM set to repeat past economic errors

Now that we are in the midst of a gas-dollar windfall, the latter-day PNM led by Patrick Manning has the chance to correct Dr Williams’s errors. But Mr Manning’s performance in the Parliament last Friday suggests that he has learned little from the past. Even as the Government came to Parliament to get an additional three billion dollars via a Variation of Appropriation Bill, it seems that Mr Manning could not refrain from boasting about all the grand plans of the Government to make Trinidad and Tobago a developed nation.

It turns out, however, that the Prime Minister’s vision centres mainly around the construction of very tall buildings in the capital city. These include Government Ministries, a convention centre and, of course, a new Parliament. Mr Manning seems not to realise that nearly all these projects are not revenue earners. Indeed, the only "economic" argument he could muster to justify this expenditure was that public servants would be more productive in nice surroundings. Even if this is so, that enhanced productivity is not going to offset the cost of all these grandiose projects. So Mr Manning seems to be on the path to do exactly what he said the Government would not do when word of the coming energy boom got out: spend wildly.

Mr Manning and the administration he leads are acting as though the energy dollars will never run out. Indeed, this was exactly the attitude of the government and the citizens in the ’70s. Then the bottom fell out of the oil barrel in the ’80s, and we were not prepared. We had to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund and take their bitter economic medicine.

Now Mr Manning seems set to repeat the errors of the past. Clearly, the enormous revenues coming in are not being used effectively to combat our myriad social problems. And, even acknowledging that this will take time, the Prime Minister’s edifice complex gives the discomfiting impression that his priorities are not the same as the average citizen’s. Indeed, Mr Manning even went so far as to defend the indefensible spending of $850 million on a sporting complex, saying that this was a "systematic" plan and not "pie in the sky." And, before this, his right-hand man, Dr Lenny Saith, argued that such spending was not a zero-sum game — basically saying that there was money for everything.

But the money will run out. This obvious truth is what the Government seems not to realise. And, when the energy dollars become scarce, the country must have in place the fundamentals that will allow us to ride out the inevitable downturn. Which is to say, we must have a sound health sector and education system. We must have a well-equipped, well-trained police service. We must have courts with adequate infrastructure and staff. We must have savings and international investments. And we must have non-energy based industries.

These are the areas the Government should be spending our gas and oil dollars on. The tall buildings can wait.