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Thursday, May 22, 2025

Imbert grades Budget package as excellent

by

Kevon Felmine
587 days ago
20231013
Minister of Finance Colm Imbert winding up the 2024 Budget debate yesterday.

Minister of Finance Colm Imbert winding up the 2024 Budget debate yesterday.

Office of the Parliament

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert lam­bast­ed the Op­po­si­tion as he wind­ed up the 2024 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, say­ing it was the worst re­sponse to a Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion he had wit­nessed in his 32 years in Par­lia­ment.

Im­bert told the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that Gov­ern­ment had pre­sent­ed an ex­cel­lent bud­get that most of the pop­u­la­tion ac­cept­ed. He said he analysed the Op­po­si­tion’s con­tri­bu­tions and found them painful, as all mem­bers re­gur­gi­tat­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­men­tary.

Im­bert said while some la­belled his fis­cal pack­age an elec­tion bud­get, the coun­try will not head to the vot­ing booths un­til 2025.

He reck­oned that Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­bers do not un­der­stand fi­nan­cial terms, adding no Op­po­si­tion mem­ber re­ferred to a page in the eco­nom­ic re­view at­tached to the Bud­get be­cause they could not han­dle it.

Im­bert re­called say­ing T&T’s fi­nan­cial buffers: Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, for­eign ex­change re­serves, and for­eign cash in banks were strong, but the UNC claimed he did not know what he was say­ing.

“If they would on­ly read Stan­dard and Poor’s com­men­tary on the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Moody’s com­men­tary and the IMF com­men­tary, and if they would on­ly take two min­utes to study eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, they would un­der­stand that the strength of a coun­try’s buffers is con­tained in all of its for­eign ex­change de­posits, be­cause if there were no de­posits in the com­mer­cial bank­ing sec­tor, then they would have to look to the State to pro­vide the cash,” Im­bert said.

He said the ap­pen­dices in the Re­view of the Econ­o­my show that Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) in 2019 was $160 bil­lion. In 2022, it rose to $202 bil­lion. He said back in 2014 when oil prices av­er­aged US$100 per bar­rel, the GDP was $171 bil­lion.

“To­day, it is over $190 bil­lion un­der this PNM Gov­ern­ment, Madame Speak­er, and when you look at the da­ta, our econ­o­my ac­tu­al­ly grew in 2019.”

Im­bert said Moody’s re­cent­ly looked at T&T’s fi­nan­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al sit­u­a­tion and gave a pos­i­tive out­look. He said the or­gan­i­sa­tion not­ed there were im­proved prospects that T&T’s fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion mo­men­tum, trig­gered by en­er­gy price, will be more sus­tained and pro­ject­ed in the base­line sce­nario de­spite low­er gas prices. Notwith­stand­ing the low­er com­mod­i­ty prices, he said Moody’s ex­pects eco­nom­ic growth to con­tin­ue, adding a sus­tained re­turn to eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion will al­so en­hance eco­nom­ic re­silien­cy.

“They do not like to hear that in sev­er­al sec­tors in the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try, there has been growth by up to 20 per cent.”

Im­bert was proud that Gov­ern­ment did not bring hard­ship up­on the pop­u­la­tion and pro­posed ini­tia­tives to help the vul­ner­a­ble with school sup­ply grants and an in­crease in the min­i­mum wage.

“If you read what Stan­dard and Poor and Moody’s said, they con­firm that we re­turned to re­al growth in 2023. That is what is hurt­ing them. We re­alised this was not a time to im­pose any hard­ship. We de­cid­ed this time we would fo­cus on the poor and vul­ner­a­ble. That is why we raised the min­i­mum wage,” Im­bert said.

He said when he made the point that the un­em­ploy­ment rate dropped to 3.7 per cent, the Op­po­si­tion claimed it was un­true. How­ev­er, he said the in­for­ma­tion is on the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) web­site, show­ing one of the low­est rates ever in the coun­try.

CSO da­ta shows 28,100 peo­ple got work in the last year while 6,000 left em­ploy­ment, he not­ed. Im­bert said these new jobs in­clud­ed 6,296 small busi­ness man­agers and man­ag­ing su­per­vi­sors, 5,773 ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als, 4,914 in min­ing and con­struc­tion, 4,703 pro­tec­tive ser­vices, 4,493 sales, 4,330 painters and clean­ers, 3,764 dri­vers, 3,460 ar­chi­tects and en­gi­neers, 3,114 man­agers, 2,475 house­keep­ing and restau­rant ser­vice, 2,433 of­fice clerks, 1,948 sec­re­taries and key­board op­er­a­tors, 1,923 farm­ers, 1,522 print­ing and pack­ag­ing, 1,403 build­ing care­tak­ers, 1,197 man­u­fac­tur­ing labours, 1,131 per­son­al care work­ers, 1,125 sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers and 1,000 com­put­er pro­fes­sion­als.


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