Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has hit back at for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul, ac­cus­ing him and the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of at­tempt­ing to “sab­o­tage the re­vival of the coun­try,” fol­low­ing Dhan­paul’s warn­ing that T&T could be head­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) giv­en the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Dhan­paul sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal man­age­ment could trig­ger fur­ther cred­it down­grades and eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, cau­tion­ing that the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get could wors­en the sit­u­a­tion.

“When you start to look at re­serves and you start to look at bal­ance of pay­ments sup­port, there is on­ly one agency you can call when you need bal­ance of pay­ment sup­port. In May 2025, the net of­fi­cial re­serve stood at $5.093 bil­lion, but for some strange rea­son, by Au­gust 2025, it had de­clined dras­ti­cal­ly to $4.6 bil­lion.”

Dhan­paul ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment was able to ma­noeu­vre fis­cal fall­outs and pos­si­ble cred­it down­grades.

“Once you go be­yond five per cent of GDP, you are tak­ing the coun­try down a very dif­fi­cult slope, but that nine bil­lion I sug­gest­ed in deficit does not in­clude pub­lic ser­vice ne­go­ti­a­tions. It is pos­si­ble the deficit can be high­er than nine bil­lion, like I sug­gest­ed, which puts us in a very dif­fi­cult po­si­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. You go­ing to have to face, luck­i­ly not me, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is go­ing to have the cred­it rat­ing agen­cies and the IMF with a deficit more than five per cent of GDP.”

When ques­tioned on this by Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, Tan­coo dis­missed Dhan­paul’s re­marks as the “des­per­a­tion of the PNM,” ac­cus­ing the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter of hypocrisy and po­lit­i­cal mis­chief.

“The com­ments of Mr Dhan­paul must be seen for what they are: des­per­a­tion of the PNM to fur­ther sab­o­tage the re­vival of this coun­try, and it is as de­spi­ca­ble as it is un­pa­tri­ot­ic,” Tan­coo said.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter ar­gued that Dhan­paul, who served briefly un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, was di­rect­ly in­volved in poli­cies that con­tributed to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­cline.

“Mr Dhan­paul is very fa­mil­iar with the fi­nan­cial state of the econ­o­my that he and his PNM col­leagues left us in, as he was a di­rect par­tic­i­pant in the poli­cies that took us here,” Tan­coo said.

“Hav­ing presided over the sub­stan­tial con­trac­tion of the econ­o­my dur­ing their time in of­fice, both Dhan­paul and (Colm) Im­bert are now fight­ing to put the last nail in the cof­fin, but I re­ject that.”

Tan­coo added that the Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P) re­port on the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic out­look reaf­firmed what the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had long main­tained—that the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion’s eco­nom­ic mis­man­age­ment placed T&T at risk of be­ing down­grad­ed to junk sta­tus.

Tan­coo said the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mained fo­cused on re­spon­si­ble and peo­ple-cen­tred gov­er­nance, with clear plans to ad­dress key na­tion­al is­sues.

“We have plans and pro­grammes to re­sus­ci­tate the econ­o­my and deal with crime, food prices, small busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, tourism, and health. He would have al­ready seen some pos­i­tive changes and will hear more of these plans in the Bud­get de­bate.”