A del­e­ga­tion from the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) yes­ter­day as part of the Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion process for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the UNC said the Op­po­si­tion del­e­ga­tion com­prised MPs David Lee and Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark and the par­ty’s chief econ­o­mist Suan­jali Per­sad.

The IMF del­e­ga­tion was led by Cami­lo To­var Mo­ra, deputy unit chief of the Caribbean Di­vi­sion I in the West­ern Hemi­sphere De­part­ment of the IMF.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, the op­po­si­tion raised sev­er­al crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing:

• The on­go­ing for­eign ex­change cri­sis;

• The coun­try’s es­ca­lat­ing debt lev­els;

• Ris­ing crime rates;

• De­clin­ing busi­ness con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my;

• A sig­nif­i­cant drop in for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment;

• The po­lar­i­sa­tion of the econ­o­my;

• Ab­sence of re­al time, re­li­able, in­de­pen­dent sta­tis­tics to fa­cil­i­tate prop­er de­ci­sion mak­ing;

• Con­cerns re­gard­ing the sta­tus of Drag­on gas and the im­pli­ca­tions of the US-Trinidad and To­ba­go re­la­tion­ship on the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

The UNC said it em­pha­sised the ur­gency of ad­dress­ing these chal­lenges and ex­pressed hope that the con­cerns raised would be thor­ough­ly con­sid­ered and re­flect­ed in the IMF’s fi­nal re­port, which is ex­pect­ed to be pub­lished in mid-2025.

The Op­po­si­tion par­ty said it re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­vo­cat­ing for poli­cies that pro­mote eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, growth, and the well-be­ing of all cit­i­zens.

The IMF’s 2024 Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion with T&T was con­clud­ed on May 8, and the re­port was pub­lished on June 5.

Un­der Ar­ti­cle IV of the IMF’s Ar­ti­cles of Agree­ment, the Wash­ing­ton DC-based in­sti­tu­tion holds bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with mem­bers, usu­al­ly every year.

A staff team vis­its the coun­try, col­lects eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, and dis­cuss­es with of­fi­cials the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments and poli­cies.

On re­turn to head­quar­ters, the staff pre­pares a re­port, which forms the ba­sis for dis­cus­sion by the Ex­ec­u­tive Board. At the con­clu­sion of the dis­cus­sion, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor as chair­man of the board, sum­ma­rizes the views of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tors, and this sum­ma­ry is trans­mit­ted to the coun­try’s au­thor­i­ties.