FROM a revised budget which began its run at a projected total package in the region of $50 billion, Trinidad and Tobago is looking to close out fiscal 2009 with an estimated revenue take of $46 billion, Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira told us yesterday.

In presenting the budget for the next fiscal year, the minister said projected outturn for the year coming to a close was expected to be just over $3 billion short of the original projection made this time last year. This is after two downward revisions earlier in the life of the outgoing budget, as a result of the global financial crisis and its effects on economies all over the world.

Where we have projected to end up when the counting is done is not bad, in comparison to the fears which had been expressed when circumstances first demanded those adjustments.

And whereas the Minister had created expectations for a similar level of spending in the package she presented yesterday, we ended up with a package in which the national sails were trimmed appreciably, to general overall satisfaction.

Minister Nunez-Tesheira announced that for fiscal 2010 the revenue projections were put at $36.6 billion, based on an international oil price of US$55 a barrel and a related gas price of $2.75 per million cubic feet.

Included in this figure, she announced deficit financing to the tune of $7.7 billion, representing 5.3 per cent of GDP. According to the terms of the international budgeting rules for a country such as ours, this is said to be well within accepted limits.

But major questions remain unanswered after the Minister’s three-hour and nine-minute presentation in the House of Representatives.

Perhaps the most obviously glaring deficiency in the presentation, the second from this Minister of Finance, was a more detailed accounting for the Government’s decisions in how it spent the revenues over the last 12 months. Whether or not this spend met with expectations about how the Government was positioning the economy to weather the economic storms still ahead was not made sufficiently clear.

And to add to this, the package unveiled yesterday was silent on exactly how the $7.7 billion in deficit spending was going to be deployed in the service of restructuring and re-directing the economy in the present circumstances.

Somewhat disconcertingly also, the minister indicated the Government’s intention to hold to one of its cherished ambitions, the establishment of an International Financial Centre in Trinidad and Tobago. This, in spite of strong indications that this initiative may already be in jeopardy.

While she announced a regime of support to the local manufacturing sector, much needed in the effort to assist in the push for economic stimulation, the minister’s measures at first glance don’t appear as impressive as they ought to be.

In addition, as in previous years, the budget goes almost nowhere in terms of the requirement for creating a more diversified economy, even if the emphasis on maintaining high employment and social spending levels was well placed.