Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not con­vinced enough ev­i­dence was pre­sent­ed in the bud­get to in­di­cate a turn­around in the econ­o­my.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert “en­gaged in sta­tis­ti­cal con­man­ship” dur­ing his three-hour bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

“No one in this coun­try feels any growth, no one in this coun­try feels any re­cov­ery, no one feels any turn­around in their pock­ets and in their bones and in the qual­i­ty of their lifestyle,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in the Par­lia­ment lob­by af­ter the bud­get.

She chal­lenged the fig­ures pre­sent­ed by Im­bert, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­gard to his claim con­cern­ing the preser­va­tion of jobs. She al­so said much of the bud­get was “re­gur­gi­tat­ed” from pre­vi­ous bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions from the Diego Mar­tin North East MP.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so not im­pressed with Im­bert’s pro­nounce­ments for Petrotrin work­ers.

“This read­ing of this bud­get was the read­ing of the fu­ner­al rites of the Petrotrin work­ers and their fam­i­lies and their com­mu­ni­ties. The Min­is­ter shame­less­ly re­fused to give de­tails about the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery and de­tails of the sep­a­ra­tion plans and the com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages,” the Op­po­si­tion Leader said.

“No de­tails on the sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages, ex­cept he gave the lump sum num­bers, we have no idea of how it is to be ac­tu­al­ly giv­en out.”

She al­so ex­pressed scep­ti­cism that sev­er­al of the mega projects an­nounced would come to fruition.

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Wat­son Duke was al­so crit­i­cal of the bud­get.

“What we have not heard is how they soft­en the fi­nan­cial blows of our busi­ness­men and busi­ness­women who are now catch­ing their ‘ne­nen’ to pay their bills giv­en the fact that sales are at an all-time low on the is­land,” said Duke, who once again took aim at the in­ter-is­land trav­el woes and its ef­fects on To­ba­go busi­ness­es.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles had a brighter out­look fol­low­ing the bud­get an­nounce­ment. He said To­ba­go had seen growth de­spite the chal­lenges on the seabridge.

“We have seen growth in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. We have al­so seen growth in the tourism sec­tor be­cause the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals have not dwin­dled. As a mat­ter of fact, there has been a slight im­prove­ment in in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals,” said Charles, who point­ed to the in­creased con­struc­tion of bed and break­fast es­tab­lish­ments as an in­di­ca­tor of pos­i­tive growth on the is­land.