Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is set to take cen­tre stage to­day as he presents the new Gov­ern­ment’s in­au­gur­al Mid-year Bud­get Re­view.

Tan­coo has in­di­cat­ed that he will high­light what he de­scribes as the fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, which he claims re­sult­ed in the “crash­ing” of the lo­cal econ­o­my.

The pre­sen­ta­tion al­so serves as a key op­por­tu­ni­ty for Gov­ern­ment to out­line its fi­nan­cial agen­da and pri­or­i­ties for the rest of the fis­cal year.

On Mon­day Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee sup­ple­ment­ed the 2025 Bud­get of $59.7 bil­lion with a fur­ther $3.14 bil­lion for 28 min­istries and state di­vi­sions.

Tan­coo promised to un­veil what he called the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s “fis­cal fi­nan­cial reck­less­ness” this af­ter­noon in the Par­lia­ment.

Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon told Guardian Me­dia that he an­tic­i­pates the bud­get re­view to high­light “the frag­ile fis­cal po­si­tion that the new ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed.”

Dr Ar­joon said ac­cord­ing to his fig­ures the cur­rent deficit was like­ly to be around six to sev­en bil­lion dol­lars for the first eight months of the fis­cal year.

In the 2024/2025 na­tion­al bud­get themed, “Stead­fast and Res­olute: Forg­ing Path­ways to Pros­per­i­ty”, the ini­tial fis­cal deficit was an­tic­i­pat­ed to be $5.517 bil­lion.

Dr Ar­joon said, “This, to­geth­er with the $46 bil­lion over­draft in the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund, un­der­scores the ex­tent of Gov­ern­ment’s in­her­it­ed liq­uid­i­ty con­straints, giv­en the fi­nan­cial in­dis­ci­pline of its pre­de­ces­sor, and high­lights the ur­gent need for im­proved rev­enue mo­bil­i­sa­tion, ex­pen­di­ture ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion, and tighter cash flow man­age­ment to re­store fis­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty.”

Min­is­ter Tan­coo said he would be re­veal­ing how Gov­ern­ment plans to raise the ad­di­tion­al $3.14 bil­lion.

Dr Ar­joon be­lieves the na­tion can­not es­cape ad­di­tion­al debt at this point giv­en the liq­uid­i­ty con­straints.

“It makes sense to bor­row now, as be­ing an in­vest­ment grade will en­sure we get bet­ter terms and in­ter­est con­di­tions. Plus, go­ing to the mul­ti­lat­er­als like the World Bank’s IFC or IDB for fund­ing may al­so al­low us to ben­e­fit from low­er in­ter­est rates and re­pay­ment mora­to­ri­ums, which is crit­i­cal giv­en our se­vere liq­uid­i­ty con­straints,” he ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia.

Dr Ar­joon al­so ex­pects em­pha­sis to be placed on the find­ings of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port.

“High­light­ing the in­ef­fi­cien­cies in fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and weak in­ter­nal con­trols, like the $1.5 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture that could not be ver­i­fied due to a lack of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, sig­nif­i­cant re­stat­ing of pri­or pe­ri­od clos­ing, and open­ing bal­ances such as cash bal­ances of over $2.5 bil­lion, dis­crep­an­cies in cheque rec­on­cil­i­a­tion et cetera.”

He added, “It is al­so high­ly like­ly that he will un­veil plans for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to gain ac­cess to the Elec­tron­ic Cheque Clear­ing Sys­tem at the CBTT, in an at­tempt to re­solve the is­sue of the $2.6 bil­lion rev­enue dis­crep­an­cy which will help to re­store some con­fi­dence the ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy of pub­lic fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.”

Stake­hold­ers await signs of man­i­festo fol­low-through

Some stake­hold­ers will be look­ing to see if man­i­festo promis­es will be ac­knowl­edged.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), a part­ner of the UNC in the buildup to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, was promised that fresh wage ne­go­ti­a­tions would be­gin at a ten per cent in­crease, al­most dou­ble what the PNM of­fered.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has yet to com­mit to when ne­go­ti­a­tions will com­mence.

PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas told Guardian Me­dia, “I know my mem­ber­ship would be look­ing for­ward to at least some­thing in re­la­tion to ne­go­ti­a­tions in the mid-year re­view. But re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, for the PSA, we want our mem­bers to get their just due. And if that can­not be done in the mid-year re­view, ab­solute­ly, we are look­ing for­ward to that in the next bud­get.”

Thomas said there are oth­er pri­or­i­ty is­sues such as the re­new­al of con­tracts at re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) and suf­fi­cient­ly staffing key or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh is hop­ing to hear about ini­tia­tives in south Trinidad to dri­ve eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. Among the projects he iden­ti­fied are the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment Project, the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, the UWI Debe Cam­pus, and the La Brea dry dock ship­ping fa­cil­i­ty.

In the area of crime, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) be­lieves this is an ide­al mo­ment for Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress re­source and in­fra­struc­ture con­cerns with­in the po­lice ser­vice.

“We feel that an op­por­tu­ni­ty has pre­sent­ed it­self here for both the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and, by ex­ten­sion, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to be able to lob­by on be­half of the TTPS to get that op­ti­mal strength as it re­lates to po­lice of­fi­cers, to get the nec­es­sary train­ing, the nec­es­sary equip­ment, and even the main­te­nance of some of our po­lice build­ings and ameni­ties for us to be able to be even more ef­fec­tive than we are present­ly on the ground,” the as­so­ci­a­tion said.

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) re­mains hope­ful that in the area of ed­u­ca­tion, Gov­ern­ment will pri­ori­tise school re­pairs and in­fra­struc­ture up­grades.

Par­lia­ment is ex­pect­ed to sit at 1:30 pm.