Richard?Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment should ac­cept "per­son­al and di­rect" blame for the Moody's down­grade of this coun­try.

He made the com­ment in an im­promp­tu in­ter­view in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, as he la­belled the sit­u­a­tion a "day of shame" in T&T his­to­ry. He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was hop­ing the down­grade would not hap­pen be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

"To­day is a day of shame in T&T. What's go­ing on in the Par­lia­ment is a shame and our avoid­able down­grade is al­so a shame."

Row­ley said even in the face of "the dra­mat­ic de­cline in oil prices, the Gov­ern­ment was telling us noth­ing should or would change be­cause they were run­ning sur­plus in the face of that rev­enue (short­fall)."

He said the Op­po­si­tion had been de­mand­ing for sev­er­al months that the Gov­ern­ment "come clean with the pop­u­la­tion."

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the Moody's down­grade was due to the con­tin­u­ous bud­get deficit with no plan by the Gov­ern­ment to deal with it.

"This Gov­ern­ment has run a deficit in every sin­gle bud­get, spend­ing far more than we were earn­ing and there was no plan to change that, (on­ly) old talk," he added.

Row­ley said an­oth­er rea­son for the down­grade was the ef­fect of the oil price de­cline on the econ­o­my and that prospects for growth were not be­ing achieved.

He said this was quite con­trary to what the Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai had been telling cit­i­zens and he ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of "fab­ri­cat­ing growth rates for us when in fact we were go­ing over a cliff and the Gov­ern­ment was telling us the op­po­site."

Row­ley said the down­grade was al­so caused by the non-ex­is­tent or un­re­li­able da­ta.

"This Gov­ern­ment has tak­en ac­tive steps to pre­vent the op­er­a­tions of a Cen­tral Sta­tis­tics Of­fice so we could get good da­ta...so we now have to re­ly on min­is­te­r­i­al mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and half-truths," he said.

"Moody's had a good look at T&T over a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od and came to the con­clu­sion that the coun­try's cred­it­wor­thi­ness is not go­ing to be based on what the Gov­ern­ment says, but on what the facts are."

He said the down­grade would have ad­verse con­se­quences as in­vest­ments might be hin­dered.

"It is not a good thing for T&T and it was en­tire­ly avoid­able," Row­ley told re­porters.

"This Gov­ern­ment has just been en­gag­ing in spend­ing, spend­ing, spend­ing with no plan," he said, adding that Moody's had been "very crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment's macro­eco­nom­ic po­lices."

He al­so said the gov­ern­ment's in­volve­ment in and man­age­ment of the Cen­tral Bank's af­fairs had been very poor.

He added, "They have cried down all the at­tempts to sta­bilise rev­enues, they have brought in no new rev­enue-rais­ing mea­sures, so now Moody's is say­ing 'if you are run­ning up debt, where are the pay­ment con­sid­er­a­tions?'"

He al­so said the Gov­ern­ment was not com­mit­ted to man­ag­ing the econ­o­my but on­ly to seek­ing his de­struc­tion so that the PP could have a chance to win the next elec­tion.

Row­ley said the down­grade "will on­ly add fu­el to that loss of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my and our op­er­a­tions and will fu­el the re­quire­ment for the black mar­ket in the pur­chase of US cur­ren­cy." Moody's rec­om­men­da­tions "are the pre­cur­sors to IMF-kind of rec­om­men­da­tions," he added.