DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry is warn­ing the Gov­ern­ment against any move to in­tro­duce new tax­es or fines, as un­cer­tain­ty grows over the tim­ing of the mid-year bud­get re­view.

Bri­an Man­ning, who is the cur­rent San Fer­nan­do East MP, yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern that the Gov­ern­ment may seek ad­di­tion­al tax­a­tion mea­sures to bol­ster rev­enue.

Speak­ing out­side the Red House, Man­ning said cit­i­zens are al­ready un­der pres­sure from ris­ing costs and lim­it­ed eco­nom­ic re­lief.

“What we’re en­dur­ing here in Trinidad and To­ba­go now is a self-in­flict­ed re­ces­sion. This Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, as we have said from the very be­gin­ning, in the last bud­get, he gave with one hand and took with the oth­er,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed the up­com­ing re­view—an im­por­tant fea­ture of the 2026 fis­cal cy­cle—could be used more as a po­lit­i­cal plat­form than an eco­nom­ic one.

“I ex­pect them to say more and more about PNM, PNM, PNM. They’re go­ing to be bust­ing marks say­ing the PNM did this, the PNM didn’t do that, just to hide and dis­tract from the fact that they have done noth­ing in the past year ex­cept make the peo­ple of this coun­try suf­fer,” he added.

His com­ments echo ear­li­er re­marks by Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House Bar­ry Padarath.

Dur­ing the May 1 de­bate on the adop­tion of the Spe­cial Re­port of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee—which fo­cused on the Janelle John-Bates con­tro­ver­sy—Padarath in­di­cat­ed that forth­com­ing bud­get dis­cus­sions would place sig­nif­i­cant em­pha­sis on the con­duct of for­mer of­fice hold­ers.

He said at the time: “In that de­bate, we will tell you what they did to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Whose friend, whose fam­i­ly, whose fi­nancier, whose out­side man, whose out­side woman was re­ceiv­ing the largesse of the State.”

When ques­tioned by re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day about the date of the re­view, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo of­fered lit­tle clar­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia asked, “Min­is­ter, any­thing about the mid-year bud­get re­view?” to which Tan­coo replied: “She just asked that. Soon, soon.”

Mean­while, Man­ning said un­em­ploy­ment has reached record lev­els, ar­gu­ing that gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy is ef­fec­tive­ly “tak­ing” with one hand what it “gives” with the oth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to pub­lic sec­tor wage ad­just­ments.

“All the pub­lic ser­vants were ex­pect­ing to get ten per cent; some are get­ting four per cent, five per cent, and they’re say­ing you’re go­ing to get some­thing in­stead of cash, what­ev­er it is, you’re not get­ting any full ten per cent. And even with that, with all of the tax­es that have so dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creased the cost of liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, at the end of the day, you’re go­ing to end up tak­ing home less,” he said.

De­spite the tra­di­tion of a May/June pre­sen­ta­tion, there is no con­sti­tu­tion­al dead­line for the mid-year re­view.

Un­der Sec­tion 113 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the process re­mains a pol­i­cy mech­a­nism shaped by fis­cal con­di­tions rather than a statu­to­ry oblig­a­tion.