Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has dis­missed in­for­ma­tion in yes­ter­day’s Guardian on the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund. He claimed it was mis­lead­ing.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that al­though the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) pro­ject­ed eco­nom­ic growth of 2.1 per cent for T&T this year, econ­o­mist Dr Roger Ho­sein has warned that the econ­o­my is in dire straits.

Ho­sein said while he had great re­spect for the IMF’s pro­jec­tions, he be­lieves the agency is be­ing “over­ly op­ti­mistic” about T&T’s eco­nom­ic out­look.

Im­bert, via a Tweet, sub­se­quent­ly stat­ed that in an at­tempt to dis­cred­it the IMF’s fore­cast of growth in the T&T econ­o­my in 2021, an ‘ex­pert’ false­ly claimed that “our econ­o­my is 40 per cent low­er now than in 2007, when in fact our GDP is eight per cent high­er now than then.”

Im­bert didn’t re­spond to mes­sages seek­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning al­so tweet­ed on the ar­ti­cle, “Con­ve­nient use of IMF fig­ures seem to be the or­der of the day.”

Man­ning lat­er told Guardian Me­dia there was no in-depth analy­sis.

He added that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter had made pub­lic state­ments that the econ­o­my is in a crit­i­cal state, “But the Min­is­ter has been do­ing a lot of work to re­al­ly set the stage for growth, com­ing out of the COVID sit­u­a­tion.”

He added: “Sev­er­al econ­o­mists, not specif­i­cal­ly Dr Ho­sein, have used the IMF’s fig­ures to crit­i­cise the Gov­ern­ment. Now that the IMF has said some­thing pos­i­tive on our growth prospects go­ing for­ward, they’re ques­tion­ing the IMF.”

“But Gov­ern­ment hasn’t been act­ing capri­cious­ly. We re­ceived ad­vice from var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies and we’ve been im­ple­ment­ing that ad­vice in the econ­o­my to sta­bilise the econ­o­my and to set the stage for growth go­ing for­ward, post-COVID. We ac­cept times are dif­fi­cult now, but we’re do­ing all that we can to im­prove this,” he said.