Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has ac­cused the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of reck­less bor­row­ing to cov­er up a de­plet­ed Trea­sury, claim­ing the gov­ern­ment is drain­ing the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial re­serves.

Speak­ing at a cam­paign meet­ing at Vickar's carpark, Rochard Dou­glas Road, Bar­rack­pore, in the mar­gin­al Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy on Thurs­day night, Dr Mooni­lal al­leged that the gov­ern­ment has al­ready bor­rowed half a bil­lion dol­lars through First Cit­i­zens Bank and Sco­tia­bank in less than a month.

“I have two of them. Save that date — March 20th. That’s al­most a month ago,” Dr Mooni­lal said. “They went to Cab­i­net and ap­proved an award of a man­date to First Cit­i­zens Bank to arrange and ful­ly un­der­write a fixed-rate loan on be­half of NID­CO — to fund in­fra­struc­ture projects.”

“They bor­rowed $250 mil­lion from FCB,” he con­tin­ued. “Ap­par­ent­ly, that wasn’t enough. They topped it up... Sco­tia­bank is now award­ed an­oth­er loan fa­cil­i­ty — this time not to NID­CO, but to NIPDEC — to fi­nance in­fra­struc­ture.”

Dr Mooni­lal ques­tioned the ur­gency, say­ing, “What in­fra­struc­ture are you go­ing to build in two weeks? This sec­ond loan is to the tune of 250 mil­lion dol­lars. They’ve tak­en $500 mil­lion!”

He fur­ther ques­tioned the ra­tio­nale for the sud­den bor­row­ing.

“They ran down the Trea­sury — the Trea­sury has no mon­ey. They are now bor­row­ing mon­ey just to keep mon­ey. They are bor­row­ing mon­ey to keep mon­ey, be­cause the Trea­sury has pot­holes," he quipped.

Turn­ing to the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial re­serves, he ac­cused the PNM of de­plet­ing the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF), which he said the for­mer UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion had built up.

“When we came in­to pow­er in 2010, the val­ue of that Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund was around TT$18 bil­lion,” he said. “When we left in Sep­tem­ber 2015, that val­ue had gone from $18 bil­lion to al­most $50 bil­lion. We added that. That is what we put.”

“We left them with $56 bil­lion in 2015. The da­ta shows that clear­ly,” he added. “And to­day, in 2024, we don’t even have $25 bil­lion.”

Dr Mooni­lal claimed that the for­mer UNC-led Cab­i­net nev­er touched the HSF.

“One thing about the Her­itage Fund: we nev­er touched it. In fact, I was in Cab­i­net for five years. We didn’t even know how to take mon­ey from it, be­cause it was nev­er in our minds to do so.”

He con­trast­ed that with what he said were mul­ti­ple PNM with­drawals.

“They took out: US$375 mil­lion, US$252 mil­lion, US$1 bil­lion, US$892 mil­lion. They de­plet­ed the Trea­sury. They ran down the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.”

Dr Mooni­lal al­so raised con­cerns about Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s con­nec­tion to Sco­tia­bank.

“Sco­tia­bank — sounds fa­mil­iar? There’s some glob­al fi­nance group or some­thing as­so­ci­at­ed with Sco­tia­bank — linked to Stu­art Young, isn’t it? I think that’s a mat­ter of fact. That is cor­rect.”

He end­ed his speech by de­mand­ing trans­paren­cy: “Where did the $500 mil­lion go that they bor­rowed three weeks ago? In whose pock­et? Which con­trac­tor?”

Al­so ad­dress­ing the meet­ing were UNC deputy Jear­lene John, Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts, and Moru­ga/Table­land can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin.