Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The 2024/2025 Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 30.

The date was an­nounced by the Fi­nance Min­istry yes­ter­day in a two-line state­ment: “The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Hon Colm Im­bert, MP, wish­es to ad­vise that the 2025 Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.”

The up­com­ing Bud­get will be the fifth and fi­nal one for the PNM Gov­ern­ment for its sec­ond term, which be­gan in Au­gust 2020. It’s al­so the Gov­ern­ment’s 10th Bud­get since the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led PNM first won elec­tions in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The Bud­get is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered by Im­bert in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the af­ter­noon of Sep­tem­ber 30.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to re­ply on Oc­to­ber 4.

In an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion yes­ter­day, UNC Shad­ow Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo told Guardian Me­dia, “This is an elec­tion year and cit­i­zens al­ready know what to ex­pect. We pre­dict a ma­m­aguy bud­get brim­ming with promis­es and gaslight­ing.

“Peo­ple al­ready know that what this Gov­ern­ment has not done over the last nine years, de­spite spend­ing $530 bil­lion, they will not do in this their last year in of­fice. The PNM’s pri­or­i­ties in of­fice have crashed our econ­o­my, gen­er­at­ed the worse crime wave in T&T’s his­to­ry, raised debt to its high­est ever lev­el, de­stroyed the mid­dle class and small and medi­um and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es and sab­o­taged the qual­i­ty of life and stan­dard of liv­ing of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens,” Tan­coo claimed.

He added, “No­body be­lieves the min­is­ter’s promis­es and elec­tion gim­micks. We need a new gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple, for the peo­ple and by the peo­ple. This PNM Gov­ern­ment has shown it­self as against the in­ter­ests of the pop­u­la­tion.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said, “Min­is­ter Im­bert’s fi­nan­cial­ly strapped so there may be noth­ing cre­ative. There may be some in­ter­nal bor­row­ings ahead or from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and he may in­clude elec­tion good­ies as minis­cule as they may be, but he’ll cer­tain­ly try to pro­vide the pub­lic with some lev­el of elec­tion dis­trac­tion.”

The 2023/2024 Bud­get which Im­bert pre­sent­ed in Oc­to­ber 2023 was a $59.209 bil­lion pack­age with the high­est al­lo­ca­tion for min­istries go­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion ($8.022B).