RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Even though $253 bil­lion was spent in the last five years, MP for Oropouche West Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says busi­ness­es are still go­ing bank­rupt be­cause the gov­ern­ment has failed to boost in­vestor con­fi­dence.
De­liv­er­ing his maid­en speech in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, Tan­coo said the gov­ern­ment has shown in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and a lack of un­der­stand­ing to the so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges be­ing faced by cit­i­zens.
"Many small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es who du­ti­ful­ly com­plied with the law, reg­is­tered, and sub­mit­ted their VAT re­turns on time were pe­nalised by this Gov­ern­ment’s with­hold­ing of their re­funds," Tan­coo re­vealed.
He added, "In our high­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, many were bank­rupt­ed as a re­sult, and sim­ply went out of busi­ness. Would you be­lieve that these are some of the busi­ness­es, bank­rupt, that this Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin North East is to­day promis­ing tax re­lief for list­ing their busi­ness­es on the stock ex­change?"He not­ed that the "460 com­pa­nies which re­ceived re­funds in bonds, still have to wait years be­fore they can col­lect the face val­ue of what the Gov­ern­ment owes them un­less they are will­ing to take a loss and sell them at a dis­count­ed price."
Tan­coo al­so said at the end of 2019, there was over $4 bil­lion in ex­cess liq­uid­i­ty in the do­mes­tic mar­ket.
"By Sep­tem­ber 2020, com­mer­cial banks ex­cess re­serves sky­rock­et­ed to 13.4 bil­lion, the high­est it has ever been in our Na­tion’s his­to­ry. In­ter­est rates are low but peo­ple are not bor­row­ing to in­vest be­cause they have no con­fi­dence in the gov­ern­ment! We have al­ready seen steps be­ing tak­en to con­duct val­u­a­tions on sev­er­al state as­sets," he re­vealed.
He added, "Why would the gov­ern­ment con­duct val­u­a­tions now in what is the worse sell­er’s mar­ket we have ever had? The Min­is­ter wants us to be­lieve that he has no plans to en­gage in a fire sale."
The MP al­so not­ed that many of the projects list­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance as com­plete had nev­er start­ed.
"I opened the PSIP 2021 book­let sup­plied by this Min­is­ter last week and ran­dom­ly opened to page 49. I just se­lect­ed one – the re­pair of Land­slip L51 Re­form Road – 2.0 -2.4 km which they claimed start­ed in fis­cal 2020. Madam Speak­er, I checked and not a sin­gle boul­der was put down on that Re­form Road and I chal­lenge any of them on the oth­er side to prove me wrong," Tan­coo said.
He added, "You can­not be­lieve any­thing these Min­is­ter say! No work was done but the mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed and spent! Where has the mon­ey gone?"

He ex­pressed con­cerns with the gov­ern­ment's pub­lic debt say­ing in 2020 the econ­o­my was ex­pect­ed to con­tract by more than 6 per cent.
"The num­ber of per­sons who lost their jobs grew by over 300 per cent in the first four years of this Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and his gov­ern­ment. They know that, and that is why they have de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­fund­ed the con­duct of the house­hold bud­getary sur­veys/ sur­vey of liv­ing con­di­tions to con­ceal the truth from the pop­u­la­tion," Tan­coo al­leged.
He said he had hoped that the Bud­get would pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for the mid­dle class.
"It is no se­cret that the coun­try per­forms best when the work­ing class and the mid­dle class get a fair chance when the econ­o­my is man­aged in the in­ter­ests of every­one, when the peo­ple who cre­ate the na­tion­al wealth, get their fair share of na­tion­al wealth when every­one has a fair chance to achieve their true po­ten­tial," he said.
He al­so chal­lenged the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to pro­vide a break­down of all Gov­ern­ment projects over the last five years say­ing there was ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion.
"I chal­lenge the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to give us the con­stituen­cy break­down of all the grants pro­vid­ed be­fore and dur­ing COVID. Let him tell us which con­stituen­cies got these 25,000 food vouch­ers, how many, and when," Tan­coo said.
He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to fix the flood­gates now.
Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan who al­so de­liv­ered his pre­sen­ta­tion said there were over 400 de­silt­ing projects in 2020.
He said many of the flood­ing prob­lems oc­curred be­cause of the il­le­gal en­croach­ment in riv­er re­serves, in­ad­e­quate drainages and a lack of fund­ing.
He boast­ed that be­cause of an ag­gres­sive drainage and de­silt­ing pro­gramme, flood­ing around the Ca­roni Drainage Basin has been re­duced.
He said oth­er de­silt­ing projects took place in Kel­ly Vil­lage, Bam­boo Num­ber One and Pe­nal.
Mean­while, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Pene­lope Beck­les dis­pelled the al­le­ga­tions of ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion say­ing 45 con­trac­tors are in the process of con­struct­ing 173 hous­ing units on ser­vice lots across T&T.
"Since its im­ple­men­ta­tion in June 2020, 45 con­trac­tors are in the process of con­struct­ing 173 units on ser­viced lots with­in ex­ist­ing HDC hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties, in­fill sites or in avail­able gov­ern­ment land de­vel­op­ments across Trinidad. The projects are lo­cat­ed at Ari­ma (Mal­abar), Ch­agua­nas (Ed­in­burgh South), D’Abadie (Boys Lane), Mt. Hope (Pi­o­neer Dri­ve), Moru­ga (Preau Vil­lage), Princes Town (Buen In­ten­to), Arou­ca (Bon Air), La Brea (Pier Road), Point Fortin (Strik­ers Vil­lage) and Gas­par­il­lo (Har­mo­ny Hall)," she added. (See oth­er sto­ry)