Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has ac­knowl­edged that the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to Gov­ern­ment's pro­ject­ed time frames for its poli­cies - but he says the ad­min­is­tra­tion is con­fi­dent in its abil­i­ty and that its plans will bear fruit in broad-based na­tion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment.

Tan­coo made that clear yes­ter­day in a brief re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia queries re­gard­ing the IMF's con­clud­ing state­ment on T&T. That was de­liv­ered on Tues­day, fol­low­ing the IMF team’s vis­it from Jan­u­ary 27-Feb­ru­ary 9 to con­duct its an­nu­al Ar­ti­cle IV mis­sion.

The IMF team's con­clu­sion state­ment in­volved 22 points of ob­ser­va­tions on Gov­ern­ment's op­er­a­tions, plans and oth­er as­pects and was in­ter­spersed with rec­om­men­da­tions, ad­vice and alerts on fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic is­sues.

Tan­coo was asked if Gov­ern­ment would im­ple­ment any of the IMF's rec­om­men­da­tions con­tained with­in its state­ment, in­clud­ing broad­en­ing the tax base, struc­tur­al re­forms, re­moval of util­i­ty sub­si­dies and a more flex­i­ble ex­change rate.

Tan­coo said, "They (IMF) have ex­pressed con­fi­dence that they are see­ing lev­els of fis­cal and mon­e­tary pol­i­cy that are de­signed to pro­mote growth and de­vel­op­ment, and they will ob­vi­ous­ly be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to pro­ject­ed time frames et cetera. We are con­fi­dent in our abil­i­ty as a gov­ern­ment and that our plans will bear re­sult in broad-based na­tion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment.

"So, we wel­come the IMF to con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor our re­sults as we roll out the UNC's vi­sion, some of which we have al­ready pub­licly an­nounced and start­ed rolling out. We al­so look for­ward to more re­al­is­tic as­sess­ments by oth­er rat­ing agen­cies."

Tan­coo will be pre­sent­ing a Fi­nance bill to Par­lia­ment af­ter Car­ni­val to ad­dress var­i­ous pend­ing mat­ters from the 2026 Bud­get. These are ex­pect­ed to in­clude the re­moval of tax on pri­vate pen­sion plans and oth­er is­sues.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern at the IMF's find­ings, stat­ing that such a re­port had not been seen in a "very, very long time." They al­so said the re­cent US$1B bond is­sue may have ap­peared to dis­tort and en­large T&T's re­serves to the IMF.

"The re­al fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, how­ev­er, will emerge ahead when the US $1 bil­lion is drawn down to re­pay the same amount sought in 2016," the PNM said.

Tan­coo had re­cent­ly said the bond is­sue un­der his tenure was to ac­com­mo­date an in­her­it­ed debt and was backed by fu­ture rev­enue and would not be passed on to an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion.