Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

With a $9 bil­lion deficit loom­ing for the 2024 Bud­get, Op­po­si­tion UNC Fi­nance spokesman Dave Tan­coo is de­mand­ing that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in his mid-year re­view to­day, pro­vide full dis­clo­sure on the true state of T&T’s econ­o­my—in­clud­ing the loss of $5B in rev­enue and its ef­fects on cit­i­zens.

“Cit­i­zens are de­mand­ing that Im­bert to­day tells the whole truth about the cri­sis he’s brought up­on our na­tion­al econ­o­my, in­clud­ing the new deficit and $5 bil­lion loss, how this af­fects T&T’s eco­nom­ic health and what it means for the av­er­age per­son who’s al­ready bat­tling crime for their life,” Tan­coo said yes­ter­day.

Im­bert will this af­ter­noon present Par­lia­ment with the mid-year re­view state­ment on the 2024 Bud­get of $59.209B.

On Mon­day, the Gov­ern­ment sought to sup­ple­ment the Bud­get by $2.3B for 12 di­vi­sions. The sup­ple­men­ta­tion and Im­bert’s re­view will be de­bat­ed to­day.

Yes­ter­day, Tan­coo not­ed that Im­bert’s 2024 Bud­get had pro­ject­ed a deficit of $5.197B. How­ev­er, an af­fi­davit that Im­bert gave to the court in Tues­day’s case by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion—which is seek­ing to halt the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty—stat­ed the deficit ex­pect­ed may be around $9B and there would be a $5B rev­enue loss.
Tan­coo said in doc­u­ments he had seen, there had been a ma­jor col­lapse of gov­ern­ment rev­enue for the cur­rent fis­cal year 2024.

He said, “This has sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the lev­el of bor­row­ing to fi­nance gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture as the gov­ern­ment will now have to fi­nance an ex­pect­ed 100 per cent hike in the bud­get deficit. This is grave cause for con­cern and amaz­ing­ly the Min­is­ter hasn’t made a sin­gle state­ment to the pub­lic on the is­sue—not even a tweet about this sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment.”

He added, “Af­ter nine years of state cor­rup­tion, si­mul­ta­ne­ous over-tax­ing of the pop­u­la­tion and un­der­fund­ing the growth and de­vel­op­ment of T&T, the truth of Im­bert’s in­com­pe­tence is now be­ing re­vealed for all to see. I call on the Min­is­ter to stop his ar­ro­gant dis­trac­tions and come clean with the pop­u­la­tion; tell us the true state of our econ­o­my.

“His re­ac­tion of back­track­ing on re­cent state­ments about so­cial ex­pen­di­ture in­clud­ing for things like free ser­vices, CDAP etc has arisen be­cause of pub­lic push­back—peo­ple want the truth, not elec­tion-year can­dy coat­ing.”

Tan­coo said it was clear Im­bert had crashed the econ­o­my.

“T&T’s lost bil­lions in for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and thou­sands of small/medi­um busi­ness­es have closed as a re­sult of Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to cre­ate an at­trac­tive in­vest­ment cli­mate.

“Im­bert has blamed ‘in­ter­na­tion­al events and Kam­la’, but while the rest of the world is reg­is­ter­ing a resur­gence of post-pan­dem­ic eco­nom­ic growth, Im­bert’s mis­man­age­ment has dec­i­mat­ed what­ev­er eco­nom­ic/nat­ur­al re­source ad­van­tages T&T held as an in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion.”

Im­bert’s state­ment to­day fol­lows a pos­i­tive re­view from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund.

But the PSA’s state­ment af­ter Tues­day’s court suc­cess not­ed the fol­low­ing points which Im­bert stat­ed in his court af­fi­davit re­gard­ing the need for the TTRA:

• The fall in oil and gas prices and low­er-than-ex­pect­ed pro­duc­tion of oil and gas has had a pro­found im­pact on T&T’s pe­tro­le­um rev­enues, lead­ing to a pro­ject­ed short­fall in rev­enue for 2024 of TT$5 bil­lion. When this sig­nif­i­cant short­fall is added to the ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ed bud­get deficit of TT$5 bil­lion for 2024, even with ad­di­tion­al one-off rev­enues from as­set sales, the coun­try’s deficit for 2024 is now ex­pect­ed to be as high as TT$9 bil­lion.

• The in­ter­na­tion­al price for oil and gas is not ex­pect­ed to in­crease sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the near fu­ture. Fur­ther, T&T is a ma­ture en­er­gy province, hav­ing pro­duced oil for over 100 years, and is chal­lenged by nat­ur­al de­clines in oil and gas pro­duc­tion. In fact, oil pro­duc­tion in this coun­try is half of what it was 15 years ago, and gas pro­duc­tion is 35 per cent less than what it was ten years ago. Such pro­duc­tion is not ex­pect­ed to im­prove un­til 2027 when it is ex­pect­ed that gas from Venezuela should be­come avail­able to the coun­try.

• Ac­cord­ing­ly, the next three years will be very chal­leng­ing for T&T from a rev­enue per­spec­tive. In fact, un­less ad­di­tion­al tax rev­enue can be col­lect­ed through the im­prove­ments in tax ad­min­is­tra­tion that will come with a ful­ly op­er­a­tional Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, the Gov­ern­ment will soon be faced with very dif­fi­cult choic­es in terms of main­tain­ing the cur­rent lev­els of sub­si­dies, grants, free ser­vices and so­cial pro­grammes. No­tably, as the Gov­ern­ment grap­ples with sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced rev­enues, there are de­mands for more and more Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture on in­fra­struc­ture and so­cial pro­grammes.