Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ny Beck­les yes­ter­day called on the Prime Min­is­ter to say what she promised in ex­change for the six-month pro­vi­sion­al OFAC li­cence from the Unit­ed States for the Drag­on gas project.

Beck­les said the econ­o­my was not de­signed to be man­aged by in­ex­pe­ri­enced mis­fits “or those who wish to use nu­clear weapons against our clos­est neigh­bour, not un­der­stand­ing that if that ac­tu­al­ly oc­curs, we would all die from nu­clear fall­out.”

“The PNM will not sup­port the diplo­mat­ic and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis be­ing per­pe­trat­ed by this Gov­ern­ment on in­no­cent cit­i­zens who now live in fear of be­ing tar­gets in a greater geopo­lit­i­cal game,” Beck­les said dur­ing her 2026 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

She said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had made un­re­al­is­tic promis­es just to win an elec­tion and the 2026 Bud­get did noth­ing on job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic stim­u­la­tion “oth­er than a pie in the sky, al­most child­ish rhetoric - no hope or blue­print for the fu­ture.”

“But this Bud­get will cre­ate the con­di­tions of to­tal eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter for T&T...it is clear this Gov­ern­ment has ab­solute­ly no plan and is sim­ply mak­ing it up as they go along,” she added, la­belling the Bud­get an “ex­er­cise in eco­nom­ic reck­less­ness.”

Cit­ing gross­ly over­es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue for 2026, Beck­les said the Bud­get was al­so based on a high­ly un­re­al­is­tic and false as­sump­tions and “se­vere­ly over­es­ti­mat­ed” en­er­gy prices.

“These poli­cies of the UNC Gov­ern­ment are an eco­nom­ic cri­sis in the mak­ing, the likes of which we haven’t seen in the last 40 years. The col­lec­tion of promis­es made by this Gov­ern­ment is the sin­gle great­est con job per­pe­trat­ed on the peo­ple.”

She said Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to bor­row $18.9 bil­lion, which was $8B more than in 2025 and $10.8B of this is for­eign bor­row­ing to be re­paid with forex. She called for ex­pla­na­tion of why the Bud­get deficit was on­ly $3.8B, when Gov­ern­ment planned to bor­row al­most $19B and with­draw more from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. Beck­les felt the true deficit is “like­ly to be clos­er to $10B.She said the Bud­get num­bers don’t add up.

“That’s why we say the Bud­get is fake and fraud­u­lent.”