KEVON FELMINE

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.