Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment’s first na­tion­al bud­get will be pre­sent­ed in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, but yes­ter­day stopped short of giv­ing the ex­act date for the pre­sen­ta­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the 2025/2026 bud­get will car­ry a deficit, an in­di­ca­tion, she said, of the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained that the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with lim­it­ed fis­cal space.

She said the state of the econ­o­my meant there was lit­tle room for fis­cal ma­noeu­vring.

“We’ve in­her­it­ed a lot of bor­row­ings as well. I don’t think we can have a bal­anced bud­get, so we may have ex­pen­di­ture out­pac­ing rev­enues, and so we would have to find cre­ative ways to sup­ple­ment those rev­enues. So, in oth­er words, there will be a deficit, and we will have to find ways to fi­nance the deficit,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She not­ed that while dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions lie ahead, her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains fo­cused on pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble and lay­ing the ground­work for re­cov­ery.

“I’ve been in the par­lia­ment long enough; many of you have been around. There are cre­ative ways of fi­nanc­ing deficits, and we will utilise the tools that are avail­able in terms of fi­nanc­ing the deficit. We ex­pect to find ... It may not be as bad as you think,” she added.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to in­ter­view for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day to get his thoughts on the up­com­ing bud­get. How­ev­er, he did not stop to take ques­tions.

Im­bert ar­gued dur­ing the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s re­cent pub­lic meet­ings that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion had po­lit­i­cal­ly aban­doned key sources of rev­enue, leav­ing bor­row­ing as the on­ly path to cov­er the pro­ject­ed $9 bil­lion deficit in the 2025 bud­get.

Im­bert al­so claimed that Gov­ern­ment di­vert­ed more than $1.3 bil­lion in loans orig­i­nal­ly ear­marked for key state agen­cies to pay salaries and meet short­falls in ex­pen­di­ture. He pro­duced in­for­ma­tion which he said came from a re­cent Cab­i­net Note.

How­ev­er, cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dra­dath Tan­coo rub­bished Im­bert and the PNM’s claims, say­ing they were bent on cre­at­ing mis­chief.