KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s 2027 Bud­get as a “biki­ni bud­get” lack­ing sub­stance, da­ta and a clear vi­sion for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s pre­sen­ta­tion in the Red House yes­ter­day, Beck­les ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to out­line spe­cif­ic plans and ini­tia­tives to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth, cre­ate jobs and de­liv­er on its elec­tion promis­es.

Beck­les said, “This is a bud­get al­most like a short skirt. Ab­solute­ly no da­ta. Not a sin­gle piece of da­ta. A biki­ni bud­get that’s what it is... This is a lazy bud­get.”

“A bud­get that is emp­ty, a bud­get that is vi­sion­less, and a bud­get that is telling the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go that this UNC Gov­ern­ment has ab­solute­ly no plans… They talk about trans­form­ing the econ­o­my, but if you’re talk­ing about trans­form­ing the econ­o­my, what are your projects? The Prime Min­is­ter spoke this morn­ing about em­ploy­ment. The ques­tion is, is there one project there that will con­vert in­to em­ploy­ment?”

Beck­les al­so ar­gued that the Bud­get failed to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress the coun­try’s em­ploy­ment chal­lenges, point­ing to the Gov­ern­ment’s elec­tion cam­paign promise to cre­ate 50,000 jobs.

Beck­les al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s em­ploy­ment record, cit­ing its na­tion­al re­cruit­ment dri­ve, which she said at­tract­ed 110,000 peo­ple, with the ad­min­is­tra­tion sub­se­quent­ly claim­ing that 20,000 jobs had been filled.

She ques­tioned whether those fig­ures re­flect­ed the re­al­i­ty of the coun­try’s em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion.

She al­so crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty in the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­sen­ta­tion of its Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP).

Beck­les said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter should have pro­vid­ed a clear­er ac­count of what had been achieved with the pre­vi­ous year’s al­lo­ca­tion be­fore out­lin­ing fur­ther ex­pen­di­ture.

She added, “You must be able to analyse your per­for­mance as it re­lates to the last bud­get so that the coun­try will have some con­fi­dence in terms of the way for­ward. That yes, you got $5 bil­lion in the PSIP and this is what you did with it. Now you have an­oth­er $5 bil­lion and you can demon­strate to the coun­try your abil­i­ty to per­form.”

She added, “This Gov­ern­ment has made it ab­solute­ly clear that they can­not per­form”

Turn­ing to the pro­posed restart of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, Beck­les ques­tioned the ab­sence of de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on how the project would be ex­e­cut­ed.

She al­so chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment over its elec­tion promise to con­struct 500 hous­es week­ly, ques­tion­ing why the Fi­nance Min­is­ter had not pro­vid­ed a de­tailed hous­ing de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme.

“Where’s hous­ing? This is a Gov­ern­ment that promised 500 hous­es a week… Not a sin­gle word. Save and ac­cept to say what is the al­lo­ca­tion for hous­ing. And what is the rea­son for that? Be­cause they have ab­solute­ly no plans.”

And when it came to al­lo­ca­tion for youth de­vel­op­ment, Beck­les said it’s “pres­sure” for young peo­ple, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of not pri­ori­tis­ing youth pro­grammes.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so re­ject­ed Tan­coo’s po­si­tion that min­is­ters would pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on their re­spec­tive pro­grammes dur­ing the bud­get de­bate.

She added, “They will tell you that the var­i­ous min­is­ters are go­ing to come and they will tell you. That is not good enough. The rea­son why the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has failed to ar­tic­u­late the plans of this Gov­ern­ment is be­cause they have ab­solute­ly none.”

Beck­les fur­ther crit­i­cised the UNC-ad­min­is­tra­tion for con­tin­u­ing to at­tribute the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties to the for­mer PNM-Gov­ern­ment, but said the Gov­ern­ment should now be held ac­count­able for its own per­for­mance.

She said, “Could you be­lieve that 18 months lat­er this Gov­ern­ment is still blam­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment? Peo­ple are fed up with that. Eigh­teen months lat­er, you must be able to say what you’re go­ing to do.”

Turn­ing to To­ba­go, Beck­les ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of ly­ing to To­bag­o­ni­ans, in­sist­ing that the 2027 Bud­get pro­vid­ed no in­crease in To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion.