Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

samp­son.nan­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has dis­missed claims by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) that the econ­o­my will col­lapse and has as­sured the Gov­ern­ment will be pru­dent in its spend­ing.

He made the state­ment as he wrapped up de­bate on the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last night.

The Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to ap­pro­pri­ate an ad­di­tion­al $2.3 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture to the $59.2 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in the na­tion­al Bud­get read in Sep­tem­ber last year.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er Op­po­si­tion mem­bers had ear­li­er strong­ly crit­i­cised the re­quest while in­sist­ing that it re­flect­ed an atro­cious state of the econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, Im­bert de­scribed their views as in­flam­ma­to­ry and in­cor­rect.

“All I heard from the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was a se­ries of in­flam­ma­to­ry re­marks that had no ba­sis what­so­ev­er, that have no sub­stance, that have no facts to back them up, that have no log­ic to back them up ... state­ments such as the coun­try is bank­rupt ... state­ments such as the econ­o­my has col­lapsed,” he said.

He added: “The ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter made the point that we’ve been hear­ing that mantra since 2016. So ap­par­ent, every sin­gle year, the econ­o­my has col­lapsed, in ‘16, ‘17, ‘18, ‘19, ‘20, ‘21, ‘22, ‘23 and now in ‘24.”

He told the House that he felt the need to re­as­sure the pub­lic that this was not the case, and read a me­dia re­lease is­sued by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) on June 5, that sug­gest­ed the econ­o­my was do­ing bet­ter than ex­pect­ed and would grow by 2.4 per cent in fis­cal 2024.

“They vex with the IMF,” he said.

He added that the Op­po­si­tion need­ed to un­der­stand what a sup­ple­men­ta­tion of ap­pro­pri­a­tion was, and he as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment would act re­spon­si­bly with the ex­tra $2.3 bil­lion it was re­quest­ing.

“Every year this ad­min­is­tra­tion, when it does its sup­ple­men­ta­tion, we are cog­nisant of rev­enue chal­lenges. We con­trol ex­pen­di­ture. If you look at the ac­tu­al out­turn at the end of the year, we nev­er use the en­tire sup­ple­men­ta­tion. We have to do the ap­pro­pri­a­tion so that the fis­cal space ex­ists, that if there is an emer­gency and the ex­pen­di­ture is in­escapable, that the ap­pro­pri­a­tion is there be­cause if you don’t have the ap­pro­pri­a­tion, you can­not make the ex­pen­di­ture. But we have al­ways come be­low the sup­ple­men­ta­tion,” Im­bert said.

He con­tin­ued: “I can tell you with­out any fear of con­tra­dic­tion, even though we have asked the Par­lia­ment to sup­ple­ment the orig­i­nal ap­pro­pri­a­tion by $2.3 bil­lion, tak­ing the to­tal ap­proved ap­pro­pri­a­tion to just over $61 bil­lion, I can tell you cer­tain­ly we are go­ing to pri­ori­tise and man­age ex­pen­di­ture, and we will cer­tain­ly not end up the year with a deficit of $9 bil­lion.”

Im­bert chal­lenged the Op­po­si­tion to ex­plain why it be­lieved that the econ­o­my had col­lapsed.

“Try and find space in the sa­van­nah for the reg­gae con­cert that took place last week and the one that is hap­pen­ing to­mor­row. Go and see if you could find space in­side there. Our na­tion’s roads are clogged with ve­hi­cles. Every car­ni­val fete was sold out this year. So how is it ... if the coun­try gone through, the econ­o­my col­lapse, peo­ple suf­fer­ing, how is it that all this ac­tiv­i­ty is tak­ing place?” he asked.

The min­is­ter told the House his Gov­ern­ment knows how to run the coun­try and has been able to do so with oil prices as low as US$25 per bar­rel.

In turn, he crit­i­cised the UNC’s eco­nom­ic man­age­ment from 2010 to 2015, dur­ing which time he not­ed it bor­rowed $31 bil­lion, “si­phoned” $14 bil­lion out of the Cen­tral Bank’s over­draft ac­count, and with­drew $17 bil­lion from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, even though it was ben­e­fit­ing from an av­er­age oil price of US$102 per bar­rel.

Im­bert al­so con­demned the Op­po­si­tion for what he said were ef­forts to get gas deal li­cences with Venezuela can­celled.

“Look at what they’re hop­ing for, that there will be a change of ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States and the new ad­min­is­tra­tion will kill and bury T&T. That is what they’re hop­ing for and they want to know why we call them un­pa­tri­ot­ic. In­stead of hop­ing that there’ll be a smooth tran­si­tion and the poli­cies would con­tin­ue no mat­ter who is the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and T&T will con­tin­ue to be warm and ben­e­fi­cial to both par­ties, they want the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to kill T&T. That is gov­ern­ment UNC style.”

The mo­tion was sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved and the cor­re­spond­ing bill passed be­fore the sit­ting was ad­journed just be­fore 8 pm.