Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt 

San Fer­nan­do East MP and for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning yes­ter­day ques­tioned Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent fis­cal strate­gies and warned of broad­er eco­nom­ic fall­out.

Dur­ing his re­but­tal to the Gov­ern­ment’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, Man­ning posed a point­ed ques­tion to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Where will the mon­ey come from? This may be the largest sin­gle bud­get in this coun­try’s his­to­ry, but our in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy prices do not re­flect a boom in our favour. Al­so, our pro­duc­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor does not re­flect any kind of boom pe­ri­od any­time soon, so again, once more, where is the mon­ey com­ing from to cov­er these ex­pens­es? I have asked that ques­tion, the coun­try is ask­ing that ques­tion, and there is still no an­swer from those on the oth­er side.”

He crit­i­cised the ab­sence of a clear rev­enue plan and ex­pressed con­cern that with­out such clar­i­ty, the coun­try could face a fur­ther ero­sion of in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go, last time I checked, is the on­ly in­vest­ment grade in the Caribbean re­gion, un­less they want to claim the in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies like the IMF and the World Bank are al­so PNM par­ty groups, then what we are hear­ing from the min­is­ter can­not be true.”

Man­ning cau­tioned that the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach, marked by ex­pand­ing deficits and heavy bor­row­ing, would like­ly lead to a down­grade by in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing agen­cies.

He said such a down­grade would “in­crease the cost of every­thing.”

“What the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing now is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to en­cour­age an in­vest­ment down­grade of this coun­try by the in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agen­cies. That is go­ing to in­crease the cost of every­thing in this coun­try, every sin­gle thing.”

He un­der­scored that past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions had man­aged the econ­o­my more pru­dent­ly, where­as cur­rent poli­cies risk un­der­min­ing the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing fi­nan­cial stand­ings.

“This econ­o­my is in no way col­lapsed. The min­is­ter is claim­ing that we are try­ing to un­der­mine con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my, while he is com­ing here at the same time to say the econ­o­my has col­lapsed. What they are do­ing in a not so sub­tle way is lay­ing the foun­da­tion for reneg­ing on many of their ridicu­lous cam­paign promis­es,” he said.

Man­ning cau­tioned that mid­dle-class tax­pay­ers were caught in the crosshairs and warned the pres­sure would fall on cit­i­zens through high­er tax­es as a means of rev­enue col­lec­tion.