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Monday, February 24, 2025

Opposition politicians share their budget expectations

by

157 days ago
20240920

Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of Sep­tem­ber 30 as Bud­get Day, Op­po­si­tion politi­cians have been giv­ing their re­ac­tions to the date and what they are ex­pect­ing in the fis­cal pack­age to be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Phillip Alexan­der, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty: “The most sig­nif­i­cant thing that we in the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty want to see in this bud­get is a prop­er ac­count­ing of what was done with the $60-odd bil­lion we gave them last year

“With re­ports from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al sug­gest­ing less than pru­dent fis­cal man­age­ment, and with many min­istries stat­ing their full fund­ing wasn’t enough to run their min­istries, we the peo­ple want to know where all of this mon­ey is go­ing. If the Fire Ser­vices and the Po­lice Ser­vice have no equip­ment and all the Coast Guard boats are in dry dock, where did the bil­lions to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty go? How is Pub­lic Util­i­ties look­ing for an ad­di­tion­al $4 bil­lion when wa­ter falls from the sky for free and the nat­ur­al gas is from left pock­et to right pock­et?

“The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry says it has a short­fall af­ter ren­o­va­tions, but schools that were claimed to be ren­o­vat­ed look a mess. Where’s the mon­ey? We’d like to see an in­crease in fund­ing to both the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. We want an ex­pan­sion of the An­ti Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau and the Fraud Squad, plus in­creas­es to the FIU and Om­buds­man’s of­fice to as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tions. At a time when cit­i­zens are be­ing made to tight­en their belts, the Gov­ern­ment should be go­ing out of its way to prop­er­ly ac­count for every dol­lar spent.

“We’d al­so like to see a re­pur­pos­ing of the army to func­tion­al na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that im­pacts dai­ly lives or shut it down and send their fund­ing to in­crease TTPS’ func­tion­al­i­ty. We’d like to ac­count for the 90,000 idle acres of farm­land the state in­her­it­ed. And what’s be­ing done to im­pact food prices? Is the CLF de­ba­cle paid off? Why does the state still con­trol and still di­vest­ing as­sets from a com­pa­ny they have no claim to?

“Pub­lic health in­ter­ven­tions to slow di­a­betes and heart dis­ease due to poor di­ets should al­so be ad­dressed to low­er T&T’s health bill.”

Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP

Dr Rai Rag­bir: “Great date. I look for­ward to en­gag­ing in a live­ly de­bate on the Bud­get.”

Gary Grif­fith, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance:

“It will be the same old same old bud­get, sound and fury sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing. But since it’s the last PNM Bud­get be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tions, you could al­so ex­pect good­ies and promis­es that they won’t be able to de­liv­er. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, noth­ing that will be of any tan­gi­ble val­ue to T&T’s de­vel­op­ment.

“As we’ve seen for the last nine years, when they found no oth­er av­enue to in­ject in­come in­to T&T apart from rais­ing tax­es, they’re go­ing to tax their way to bal­anc­ing the bud­get which is the on­ly way they could as they have no cre­ativ­i­ty and out-of-the-box think­ing ca­pac­i­ty to en­sure in­come can equate with ex­pen­di­ture. So the sit­u­a­tion will lead to in­creased tax­es bur­den­ing the peo­ple fur­ther and fail­ure to do so would see T&T end­ing up with a deficit or be­ing un­able to ac­quire the re­quired re­sources.

“No mat­ter what the bur­den will be on peo­ple. We can ex­pect the by-prod­uct of all this to be more in­fla­tion which leads to un­em­ploy­ment, busi­ness clo­sures and mi­gra­tion, all of which leads to in­creased crime. It’s a domi­no ef­fect we’ve seen with the bud­gets of this out­go­ing PNM Gov­ern­ment and it’ll be the fi­nal nail in T&T’s cof­fin. The in­com­ing gov­ern­ment would have its work cut out to turn around the econ­o­my af­ter the dam­age done in the last decade. It’s not ir­repara­ble but would re­quire mas­sive amend­ments in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and cent-by-cent mon­i­tor­ing of every­thing spent to pre­vent waste­ful spend­ing and mis­man­age­ment.”

Louis Lee Sing, HOPE: “This is by all con­sid­er­a­tions an ear­ly bud­get, which sug­gests the Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing for an ear­ly gen­er­al elec­tion. This is in sync with all the in­di­ca­tors that the Prime Min­is­ter has is­sued to his par­ty. All of this rep­re­sents an ac­cel­er­a­tion of gov­ern­men­tal ac­tiv­i­ty. Ap­proval of an ear­ly bud­get gives the Gov­ern­ment space to im­ple­ment a range of projects in­tend­ed to con­sol­i­date votes.

“I’m wait­ing to see what this Gov­ern­ment, which has demon­strat­ed a lack of ca­pac­i­ty to cre­ate nov­el projects, will present. We don’t want an­oth­er list of un­ful­filled promis­es. HOPE is prepar­ing for a May 2025 elec­tion.”

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray: “My pri­ma­ry ex­pec­ta­tion is the Gov­ern­ment will of­fer a clear, strate­gic plan aimed at ad­dress­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing T&T, in­clud­ing the on­go­ing fis­cal pres­sures, ris­ing cost of liv­ing, and stag­nat­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, I’m con­cerned about whether this bud­get will pri­ori­tise sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth or mere­ly of­fer tem­po­rary re­lief mea­sures. We’ve wit­nessed, in pre­vi­ous years, poli­cies that fo­cus heav­i­ly on short-term so­lu­tions, which fail to ad­dress the deep­er struc­tur­al is­sues: un­der-per­for­mance of key sec­tors like trade, in­dus­try, and tourism, plus in­suf­fi­cient ef­forts to­ward dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

“As UNC’s Shad­ow Min­is­ter for Trade and In­dus­try, I hope to see ro­bust ini­tia­tives aimed at cre­at­ing a more con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness­es, fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion and ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal economies. It’s im­per­a­tive the bud­get se­ri­ous­ly ad­dress fis­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry re­forms need­ed to re­store in­vestor con­fi­dence and stim­u­late sus­tain­able job cre­ation. We’re at a crit­i­cal junc­ture. I re­main cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, but the gov­ern­ment must prove it’s ca­pa­ble of tak­ing mean­ing­ful steps to­ward a brighter eco­nom­ic fu­ture for T&T.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Damien Ly­der: “Ex­pect more promis­es that will be bro­ken and good­ies to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion in­to re­turn­ing PNM to of­fice. If you want to know the truth about T&T’s fu­ture, lis­ten to the Op­po­si­tion’s re­sponse in the bud­get de­bate.”


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