Colm Im­bert has failed as Fi­nance Min­is­ter! There is no oth­er way of say­ing it. He must now do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign since it is clear that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will not do what he must know is in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try and sack his Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

In this hy­per-par­ti­san so­ci­ety that we live in where the trag­ic death of a young woman could be painful­ly seen by so many through the eyes of pol­i­tics, I am sure this call will be in­ter­pret­ed as me ei­ther not lik­ing the min­is­ter, or not lik­ing the gov­ern­ment or the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) or even be­ing a sup­port­er of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

The truth is that as a cit­i­zen of this coun­try and hav­ing spent some time look­ing at the per­for­mance of fi­nance min­is­ters from Sel­by Wil­son to Wen­dell Mot­t­ley all the way to Im­bert, the fact is the present min­is­ter does not and can­not en­gen­der con­fi­dence, that he has any re­al plan to fix the eco­nom­ic woes.

He just does not have the ideas, skills or open-mind­ed­ness to solve the prob­lems. The last six years have proven Im­bert has al­ready tak­en us down the road to perdi­tion with the re­al prospect of hell fac­ing us, un­less we do some­thing quick­ly.

Let us just look at the facts. Min­is­ter Im­bert in­her­it­ed an econ­o­my fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. The crude oil prices had col­lapsed from av­er­ag­ing al­most US$100 dur­ing the term of the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion. Crude pro­duc­tion had al­so de­clined 20 per cent from over 100,000 bar­rels of oil per day(bo/d) when the UNC came to pow­er, to clos­er to 80,000 (bo/d).

Nat­ur­al gas prices were al­so on their way down from US$10 per mil­lion British ther­mal units (mmb­tu) in Asia to close to US$4 (mmb­tu). Re­mem­ber what im­pacts the off­shore econ­o­my sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­ter­mines the health of the on­shore econ­o­my.

Im­bert’s ap­point­ment came af­ter five years of prof­li­gate spend­ing by the UNC gov­ern­ment in which the coun­try’s pat­ri­mo­ny was frit­tered away with bil­lion-dol­lar projects, many cost over­runs, al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, mas­sive in­creas­es in trans­fers and sub­si­dies.

Do you re­mem­ber the ba­by milk fi­as­co? Im­bert found a coun­try liv­ing above its means. So he did not in­her­it an easy sit­u­a­tion.

What did he do? In­stead of tack­ling head-on the need to ad­just our spend­ing to meet the re­al­i­ty of our sit­u­a­tion and move quick­ly to trans­form the econ­o­my, he spent five years be­ing a shop keep­er, cut­ting here and there and blam­ing the UNC for our hard­ship.

Not once has Im­bert or this gov­ern­ment owned the econ­o­my. It has been a case of pure smart­man­ism, blam­ing the for­mer gov­ern­ment and now the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The struc­tur­al prob­lems we face as a coun­try are not re­lat­ed to the pan­dem­ic but are com­plete­ly based on our re­luc­tance to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to en­sure val­ue for mon­ey and in­vest­ment in­to the fu­ture of the econ­o­my.

When Im­bert took up the po­si­tion of Fi­nance Min­is­ter the coun­try’s to­tal debt was $84.1 bil­lion. By No­vem­ber last year, it had risen to $101.1 bil­lion ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank of T&T.

Pub­lic debt as a per­cent­age of GDP has moved from 53.9 per cent to over 80 per cent un­der Im­bert. This mas­sive in­crease had been hap­pen­ing pri­or to COVID-19 be­cause by 2019 it had gone up 10 per­cent­age points. No amount of smoke and mir­rors can hide that re­al­i­ty.

It does not take in­to ac­count the $15 bil­lion he has over the years tak­en out of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

When Im­bert took of­fice in 2015 the per capi­ta gross do­mes­tic prod­uct was US$18,484 that had fall­en to US$17,370 by 2018. The coun­try’s of­fi­cial for­eign re­serves have fall­en from US$10 bil­lion to just about US$7 bil­lion.

With the ex­cep­tion of the in­fla­tion rate, al­most every eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tor was in de­cline pri­or to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Be­yond the raw num­bers the min­is­ter’s pro­cliv­i­ty to be eco­nom­ic with the truth does not in­spire con­fi­dence.

He has con­sis­tent­ly been wrong in his as­sump­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly on the oil and gas sec­tor. Im­bert with the back­ing of the Prime Min­is­ter, has tried to shut down any­one and any in­sti­tu­tion that dare have a view that is at vari­ance with theirs.

We can on­ly re­mem­ber the scur­rilous at­tack on econ­o­mists, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mar­la Dukha­ran seek­ing to sug­gest that there is some kind of po­lit­i­cal mo­tive in their analy­sis.

He has nev­er apol­o­gised to the Par­lia­ment for his claims of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion to av­er­age 3.8 bcf/d in 2019, even though any­one who knew any­thing about the in­dus­try knew this was wrong and would hurt gov­ern­ment’s ex­pect­ed rev­enue.

Im­bert’s lack of can­did­ness makes it dif­fi­cult to be­lieve what is re­al from what is a smoke­screen.

An­oth­er short­com­ing of the min­is­ter is his un­will­ing­ness to lis­ten to ad­vice. From all re­ports he did all he can to frus­trate the work of the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment board.

His ad­vis­ers at the Min­istry of Fi­nance have left him. There­fore, the en­gi­neer-cum-Fi­nance Min­is­ter is do­ing it with lit­tle high-lev­el sup­port. It might be good for your ego but not for the coun­try.

So we have es­tab­lished that the min­is­ter has failed in all the cru­cial ar­eas. For him to come now and seek to tell us the truth about rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and blame it on COVID is to play smart with fool­ish­ness.

He has been able to re­duce the over­all size of the bud­get by tak­ing some de­ci­sions that re­duced trans­fers and sub­si­dies, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the fu­el sub­sidy which he has now re­moved.

But Im­bert has not dealt with the over-val­ued ex­change rate, he has raid­ed the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion fund.

Im­bert has not seen one year of growth un­der his tenure. He has not im­ple­ment­ed the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery re­port. He has not set this coun­try on the path to sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Im­bert has sim­ply failed!

As a coun­try and as the par­ty of Williams and Mot­t­ley sure­ly the PNM could do bet­ter. We de­serve bet­ter than Im­bert!