An Apolitical Conservative
Ten Year Budget, constantly reviewed, prioritized, measured and reported by an
independent Office of Budgets, is driven by the rate of available
revenue receipts. Noting that, when such core revenue is down, borrowings, with
interest payments are incurred, further increasing expenditure. Hence, when
revenue is up debt should be the first to be reduced. However, many persons seem
to expect more expenditure without deficit reduction. This is another attempt
to explain to ordinary people things taken for granted. Resource
Preservation, Human Development, Infrastructure Management, Economic Drivers, Fiscal
Policy and Governance.
Resource Preservation
These funds are to enact the policies of
the Ministry of National Security;
the Defence Forces, its arms, divisions and initiatives, along with the crime
deterrence strategies of the Police
Service, whose expenditure is independently control. Many experts agree
that the bottleneck, in achieving crime reduction, resides in the justice
system and that no additional funds allocated to either the Ministry of
National Security or the Police Service can help. Such judicial experts call
for speedy disposal of violent cases, employing video conferencing for
preliminary enquiries and similar strategies, resulting in minimum time spent
in remand, with less exposure to wrong influences, allowing for the falsely
accused to recover a productive law-abiding life, while starting the guilty
person's rehabilitation.
Human Development
The
progress of any country, nation, society is driven by its human resource and
the development of such; its citizenry, its people, its skills and talents. This
category consists of the Ministries of
Education, Health, Social Development and Family Services, Community Development, Culture and the Arts
and Sport and Youth Affairs. A
population that is educated, healthy, well-adjusted as a society, contributing
in the community, supporting culture and the arts, participating in competitive
sport and encouraging the youth, will build and maintain a happy, respectful,
caring and sharing nation. Noting that, growth industries and job creation are
as a direct result of investment in ideas, and the only true source of ideas is
the human being.
Infrastructure Management
Such
Infrastructure expenditure has widely been realized and accepted to directly
impact productivity; outputs, driven by comfortable and safe, work and play
environments, for example; organizations to produce and deliver water and
electricity, industrial parks, courts, police stations, hospitals, schools,
housing, administration offices, communications, community centers, open parks,
transport hubs, roads and bridges, etc. This Infrastructure Management category
consist of the Ministries of Public
Utilities, Works and Transport, Rural Development and Local Government, Housing
and Urban Development and the Tobago
House of Assembly.
Economic Drivers
The nation's revenue, to offset its total
annual expenditure, comes from the collections of taxes, duties and royalties;
taxes on (personal income) salaries and wages, on (consumption) sales and value
added, on (operations) business levy and green fund, on (corporation) profits,
etc. Such revenue generating activities must be encouraged and facilitated via
Economic Drivers, which designs, implements and reviews the conditions for
investment, employment and, the resulting, taxation. Economic Drivers are administered
by the Ministries of Energy and Energy
Industries, Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries, Planning and Development, Foreign
and CARICOM Affairs, Labour and Small Enterprise Development, Trade and
Industries, and Tourism.
Fiscal Policy
This
category comprises the Ministry of
Finance, Charges on Account of the
Public Debt and Pensions and
Gratuities. Such Policies must focus efforts on increasing productivity and
revenue collection while, reducing the nation's debt and debt servicing expense.
Hence, as core revenues fall, below recurrent expenditure, resulting in
mounting deficits, forcing new borrowings to balance the nation’s annual
budget, severe pending cuts, will then trigger an inability to borrow or repay,
placing the economy into a debt trap. So, if core revenues raise, the emphasis
must be to reduce debt, while maintaining low recurrent expenditure and
rebuilding national savings to where it should have been, in anticipation of
the next fall in revenue.
Governance
A
nation's development is badly hindered and retarded by individual greed;
corrupt public officers, bias reporting, unfair hiring practices, slow justice,
unbalance dispute settlements, unlawful opinions, compromised records, a lack
of transparency, general back room dealings, selling executive influence,
misusing presidential privilege, laws to benefit the few rather than the many,
practices and actions which have to be avoided, rooted out, dealt with and,
ultimately replaced by Good Governance. Consisting of positions, offices,
agencies and ministries that monitors good, moral and ethical, behavior, such
as; Ministry of Public Administration
and Communications (MPAC) & The Personnel Department, The Judiciary & The Industrial Court,
Ministry of the Attorney General and
Legal Affairs, Other Heads of Expenditure involved in Governance, The
Office of the Prime Minister, and The President & The Parliament.
Rationale
T.A.J & Associates Company Limited
uses this occasion to comment on topics that have been covered, both academically
and by the mainstream media, to add its opinion and point out investment
opportunity, not to invoke any social action.
