Nadaleen Singh

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day fur­ther cuts to the 2016/2017 bud­get may re­sult in ad­verse ef­fects on the econ­o­my and there­fore more cuts could not have been done.

Fur­ther cuts, he said, would have led to in­creased un­em­ploy­ment and cuts were easy to say but not easy to do. Speak­ing at the post-Bud­get fo­rum host­ed by T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Im­bert re­spond­ed to calls by com­men­ta­tors ad­vo­cat­ing cuts to the bud­get, by say­ing: "We are at a point where if we cut ex­pen­di­ture any­more, there could be a se­vere run on the econ­o­my... and a se­vere de­pres­sion (in the econ­o­my)."

He said there was need for con­tin­ued spend­ing in the econ­o­my to gen­er­ate jobs to con­tin­ue to boost pro­duc­tion. What was clear, he said, was that for the next three to four years the sit­u­a­tion with the en­er­gy sec­tor was go­ing to be dif­fi­cult. It means T&T need to find oth­er means of at­tract­ing rev­enues, he said.

Al­though the au­dit in­to the debt owed to con­trac­tors was still on­go­ing, Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment had "qui­et­ly" set­tled $1 bil­lion and was ex­pect­ed to set­tle an­oth­er $1 bil­lion, not­ing that on­ly "le­git­i­mate" bills could be set­tled.

While not specif­i­cal­ly re­fer­ring to any col­lec­tive agree­ment, he ad­mit­ted that when col­lec­tive agree­ments had to be set­tled they had the po­ten­tial to do dam­age, as the sums were large and have to be paid all at once. He said that was the ra­tio­nale for sig­nalling in the bud­get state­ment that Gov­ern­ment want­ed to meet with Petrotrin's union.

Asked what were the biggest chal­lenges he faced for the fu­ture, Im­bert said there was need for T&T to in­crease its sus­tain­able rev­enue since a lot has been lost from en­er­gy rev­enues.

"We have lost $17 bil­lion from the en­er­gy sec­tor, so we have to gen­er­ate in­come from oth­er sources. That's why we are push­ing with the San­dals re­sort and why we have to push with ser­vices... agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing and so on... that's the chal­lenge this coun­try faces now. We need to get away from the idea that the en­er­gy sec­tor will save us. It's no longer the case."

He said by 2018 there should be a gas flow be­tween Venezuela and T&T.