When she was sworn in one week ago, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the au­di­ence at Pres­i­dent’s House that the cam­paign was over and “you know our mes­sage of love, care and hap­pi­ness.”

Just days ear­li­er, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar led the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and its coali­tion of in­ter­ests to a huge vic­to­ry in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, emerg­ing with 26 seats in the 41-con­stituen­cy Par­lia­ment, far ahead of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, which re­ceived 13 seats. The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty got two seats.

In that speech, Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar said:

"My role as your new­ly elect­ed prime min­is­ter is sim­ple: It is to love you and to do every­thing pos­si­ble to make you and your loved ones hap­py. For too long, we have car­ried the heavy bur­den of a gov­ern­ment that seems to have for­got­ten you. It is time we rise to the oc­ca­sion and let cit­i­zens take their right­ful places side by side with their new gov­ern­ment.

"It is said that to whom much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed. We as a na­tion and as a peo­ple have been blessed with much. Ad­mit­ted­ly, we have al­so wast­ed much, un­for­tun­tate­ly.

"It is time we set T&T on the right path­way, where we cease to gov­ern to sim­ply win the next elec­tion and in­stead gov­ern to cre­ate wealth and op­por­tu­ni­ties for sev­en gen­er­a­tions in­to the fu­ture.

"In these cir­cum­stances, we must do bet­ter. We must be more in­no­v­a­tive. We must cre­ate mean­ing­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties and do right by all peo­ple, so that we are all unit­ed as a na­tion and we can then step bold­ly in­to the fu­ture with con­fi­dence...

"This day starts the jour­ney to re­build our econ­o­my, to re­store our se­cu­ri­ty, to rev­o­lu­tionise our ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy, di­ver­si­fy our rev­enue streams and re­new our peo­ple's hope, faith and con­fi­dence to pro­pel our beloved na­tion for­ward."

Re­build­ing the econ­o­my and di­ver­si­fy­ing the coun­try's rev­enue streams are both ex­treme­ly im­por­tant el­e­ments of the task that the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion faces over the next five years.

But, giv­en the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my, I would ar­gue that, as an im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tive, main­tain­ing cur­rent rev­enue streams is even more im­por­tant than di­ver­si­fy­ing those rev­enue streams.

It would be ide­al for this new ad­min­is­tra­tion to mainain rev­enue streams, while seek­ing to di­ver­si­fy them. But, clear­ly and ob­vi­ous­ly, the need to main­tain ex­ist­ing rev­enue streams is an im­me­di­ate re­quire­ment of an ad­min­is­tra­tion that faces a fis­cal deficit for the 2025 fi­nan­cial year, which start­ed on Oc­to­ber 1, 2024 and ends on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

In de­liv­er­ing the 2025 bud­get, for­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance pro­ject­ed that T&T would col­lect $54.22 bil­lion in rev­enue and spend a to­tal of $59.74 bil­lion. So in Sep­tem­ber last year, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­ject­ed a fis­cal deficit of $5.52 bil­lion, based on oil price as­sump­tions of US$77.80 per bar­rel and nat­ur­al gas as­sump­tions of US$3.59 per MMB­tu.

Know­ing that T&T is in a tight fis­cal po­si­tion—mean­ing that it must col­lect as much rev­enue as pos­si­ble and does not have too much room to in­crease ex­pen­di­ture—what does the new prime min­is­ter do?

Well, the first con­crete an­nounce­ment she made in her speech af­ter her new Cab­i­net was sworn in on Sat­ur­day was that the UNC gov­ern­ment would re­peal the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) Act.

This ac­tion would be tak­en be­cause "there are some ar­eas of pri­or­i­ty, in keep­ing with our cam­paign's themes, poli­cies and pro­grammes."

Now, the pur­pose of the TTRA is to cre­ate a new se­mi-au­tonomous en­ti­ty and trans­fer to it the tax and cus­toms ad­min­is­tra­tion and en­force­ment pow­ers now held by the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

In its strate­gic plan, the TTRA en­vis­ages that its es­tab­lish­ment would re­sult in an in­crease in tax rev­enues of be­tween $3 bil­lion and $10 bil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to an af­fi­davit filed by for­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, dat­ed June 3, 2024, "In ac­cor­dance with the strate­gic plan, the Au­thor­i­ty aims to re­tain its tax col­lec­tion lev­els in its first year of op­er­a­tion, fol­lowed by in­creas­es in rev­enue equiv­a­lent to one per cent and three per cent of GDP in the sec­ond and third years of op­er­a­tion, re­spec­tive­ly, which would be equiv­a­lent to an in­crease in rev­enue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 bil­lion and $6 bil­lion," in its sec­ond and third years.

The pur­pose of the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTRA is to max­imise the col­lec­tion of rev­enue for the na­tion­al good by man­ag­ing the col­lec­tion of tax­es and cus­toms du­ties, en­hanc­ing trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, and im­prov­ing bor­der con­trol, ac­cord­ing to its web­site.

The en­ti­ty would do this by in­creas­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of the large num­ber of com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als in T&T who do not cur­rent­ly pay tax­es on their in­come, or who do not pay the tax­es on their in­come that they should.

Sure­ly, one of the first tasks of the TTRA, af­ter it was up and run­ning, would have been to launch a new tax-gap analy­sis that would have pro­vid­ed the en­ti­ty with an up-to-date es­ti­mate of the amount of tax rev­enue T&T is sup­posed to be col­lect­ing.

Ques­tions:

1) Know­ing T&T is fac­ing a sit­u­a­tion of con­strained rev­enue well in­to the fu­ture, giv­en de­clin­ing en­er­gy rev­enues and the "death" of the Drag­on gas project, why would Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounce, as one of her first or­ders of busi­ness, the re­peal of the TTRA Act?

2) If the new ad­min­is­tra­tion does not agree with cer­tain claus­es in the TTRA Act, would it not be a bet­ter idea to amend the leg­is­la­tion rather than re­peal it?

3) How does the new ad­min­is­tra­tion ex­pect to fund its am­bi­tious ex­pen­di­ture plans—with com­mit­ments to start pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent, for ex­am­ple—if it does not have the cer­tain­ty of in­creased tax rev­enue from lo­cal com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als?

4) If not the TTRA, how does the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­pose to max­imise the amount of rev­enue it col­lects do­mes­ti­cal­ly?

5) In the same speech on Sat­ur­day, the new prime min­is­ter re­ferred to ex­plor­ing op­tions of get­ting nat­ur­al gas from Guyana. Is she not aware that Guyana is al­ready ex­plor­ing four op­tions for mon­etis­ing its gas and that send­ing gas to T&T would not pro­vide our Cari­com neigh­bour with the re­turns of the oth­er four?

6) Who ben­e­fits from the re­peal of the TTRA Act and, more specif­i­cal­ly, did any of the fi­nanciers of the UNC's 2025 elec­tion cam­paign make their con­tri­bu­tions con­di­tion­al on the re­peal of the leg­is­la­tion?

In re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia af­ter her Cab­i­net was sworn in, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar was asked about the many ex­pen­di­ture com­mit­ments made dur­ing the cam­paign, and whether she has a 100-day, or three-month plan, for de­liv­er­ing on the promis­es.

"I have a one-day plan," she said, adding, "I take it one day at a time and we will do the best we can. All of us are com­mit­ted to keep­ing track of what we promised. And it is not just about promis­es, you know. It is about re­al­ly tak­ing care of peo­ple. I think my en­tire Cab­i­net car­ries for­ward with that think­ing and we will just do the best we can, one day at a time."

She al­so said that there was some low-hang­ing fruit that the new gov­ern­ment could ad­vance with­out too much mon­ey.

"But I am re­al­ly on a track now to find rev­enue streams. We need to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, which will take a lit­tle longer, and that's why I talked about what we have a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in, which is in the en­er­gy sec­tor..."

Our prime min­is­ter is say­ing no to the TTRA, but she is re­al­ly on a track to find rev­enue streams?

Please make that make sense to us, Madame Prime Min­is­ter.