Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has a lot to do in his new port­fo­lio and does not yet have a re­port to pro­vide to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the state of the Trea­sury and the econ­o­my.

Af­ter com­plet­ing meet­ings with min­istry di­vi­sions and study­ing doc­u­ments re­ceived yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said he hopes to have a pre­lim­i­nary re­port on his re­view of the Trea­sury for the PM lat­er this week.

Af­ter be­ing sworn in last Sat­ur­day, Tan­coo was man­dat­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­view the state of the Trea­sury. She said she ex­pect­ed that Tan­coo and Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh would put their heads to­geth­er to see what the Gov­ern­ment can do to keep their elec­tion promis­es af­ter as­sess­ing what is there. She added that it is on­ly then min­istries will be able to work to­wards get­ting rev­enue streams in­to T&T.

Tan­coo and oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in the Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion got down to their first day of work yes­ter­day fol­low­ing last Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion vic­to­ry.

The first day saw the 24 cab­i­net min­is­ters, four min­is­ters of state and six par­lia­men­tary sec­re­taries en­ter­ing their min­istries, be­ing de­briefed by per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, meet­ing staff and get­ting ac­quaint­ed with port­fo­lios.

The Fi­nance Min­istry stat­ed that Tan­coo was greet­ed by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Suzette Tay­lor-Lee Chee and the min­istry’s ex­ec­u­tive team of per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­taries.

The state­ment added that Tan­coo ex­pressed deep grat­i­tude for the warm re­cep­tion and com­pre­hen­sive brief­ing and in­di­cat­ed he looked for­ward to an ex­cel­lent work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the min­istry’s staff and its stake­hold­ers.

Con­tact­ed on the re­view of the Trea­sury, Tan­coo asked Guardian Me­dia for more time to re­view the var­i­ous doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted to him, “and to get an­swers to the mul­ti­ple queries I have - there is a lot to re­view.”

He added, “Af­ter the var­i­ous meet­ings with the Fi­nance di­vi­sions and study­ing the doc­u­ments in hand I’ll have a pre­lim­i­nary re­port for the Prime Min­is­ter ahead on the Trea­sury.”

Not­ing his meet­ings with se­nior min­istry of­fi­cials at the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex in Port-of-Spain, he said, “This was a very in­spi­ra­tional ex­pe­ri­ence, as I not­ed the strong pres­ence of young, qual­i­fied per­sons in se­nior po­si­tions of the es­tab­lish­ment. The per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and deputy PSs pro­vid­ed a brief­ing as well as a com­pre­hen­sive set of brief­ing doc­u­ments from the var­i­ous de­part­ments. Over com­ing weeks, I’ll be vis­it­ing more of the min­istry’s de­part­ments and di­vi­sions. I look for­ward to work­ing with staff as we fo­cus on trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment.”

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Swarats­ingh’s min­istry said he “got straight to work” meet­ing with Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Aar­ti Be­dassie-Ma­haraj, the deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, heads of de­part­ment, man­agers and staff to be­gin strate­gis­ing and plan­ning the min­istry’s work pro­gramme.

The min­istry stat­ed, “The Min­is­ter thanked staff in ad­vance and vowed to main­tain an open con­ver­sa­tion loop to keep every­one in­volved in all of the ini­tia­tives to en­er­gise the path of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment in T&T through the Min­istry. The min­is­ter em­pha­sised his goal is to en­sure that all the plans, pro­grammes and ac­tiv­i­ties un­der the man­date of the min­istry are done to com­ple­tion at an ex­ceed­ing­ly high lev­el, while dri­ving the agen­da for the na­tion’s econ­o­my.”

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith, who was asked about plans, in­clud­ing pol­i­cy on the rental of pri­vate sec­tor build­ings, said he would be do­ing a full as­sess­ment of the min­istry.

“And we are al­so guid­ed by our man­i­festo and the plans es­tab­lished as it re­lates to the de­liv­ery of ser­vices in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and the new­ly mint­ed AI agen­da,” Smith added.

Al­so, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin and Min­istry Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Dr Narindra Roop­nar­ine met with act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Videsh Ma­haraj and staff.