JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Serious questions for Persad-Bissessar

by

331 days ago
20240829

At the last Mon­day night fo­rum of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, its po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, made some pro­pos­als and promis­es that are sure to be pop­u­lar with the elec­torate, but which re­quire more de­tails and ex­pla­na­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said if her par­ty forms the gov­ern­ment af­ter the next gen­er­al elec­tions, which are due by next year, the UNC “will not in­crease wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty rates in this eco­nom­ic cli­mate.”

She said un­der her lead­er­ship, the gov­ern­ment will al­so not im­ple­ment the prop­er­ty tax and she does not sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants.

“We call on the Gov­ern­ment to re­scind that and give the work­ers a high­er in­crease,” she said.

Quite in­ter­est­ing­ly, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said if her par­ty wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion, it “will move to low­er tax­es. We are against the in­tro­duc­tion of any new tax­es.”

In ef­fect, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is propos­ing to con­tin­ue the ex­ist­ing bil­lion-dol­lar sub­si­dies on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, while in­creas­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s four per cent of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants. And she in­sists she will move to low­er tax­es and will not im­ple­ment any new tax­es.

She al­so said a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion “would cre­ate 50,000 new jobs, with­out a sin­gle new tax” and pro­posed to make qual­i­ty hous­ing more af­ford­able and ac­ces­si­ble to young peo­ple.

The ob­vi­ous ques­tion that aris­es is this: if a UNC gov­ern­ment plans to in­crease the coun­try’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, while not in­creas­ing the tax bur­den on the pop­u­la­tion, how would her ad­min­is­tra­tion fund what is sure to be a widen­ing fis­cal deficit?

Does she pro­pose to fund fu­ture po­ten­tial fis­cal deficits by con­tin­u­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy of bor­row­ing monies on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­kets?

Does she pro­pose to con­tin­ue the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ac­cess­ing of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, when­ev­er en­er­gy rev­enues de­cline?

Will a fu­ture UNC gov­ern­ment sell state as­sets to pay pub­lic ser­vants, fund the trans­fers and sub­si­dies al­lo­ca­tion, which ac­counts for more than half of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, and ser­vice the coun­try’s debt?

For the UNC leader’s pro­pos­als to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, she must tell the pop­u­la­tion, in de­tail, how her gov­ern­ment would fund the ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture that her man­i­festo pro­pos­als/promis­es en­tail. To do oth­er­wise would be ir­re­spon­si­ble and would be an at­tempt to take ad­van­tage of sim­ple-mind­ed Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, who are on­ly in­ter­est­ed in what their coun­try can do for them.

It would al­so be un­ac­cept­able for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to claim that bil­lions of dol­lars would be saved by crack­ing down on waste and cor­rup­tion. With re­spect, the coun­try has heard that one be­fore.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader’s pack­age of elec­tion good­ies must be viewed in the con­text of Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s June 3 af­fi­davit in the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) mat­ter, which stat­ed that “the next three years will be very chal­leng­ing for the coun­try from a rev­enue per­spec­tive.”

Im­bert not­ed that if the TTRA is not ful­ly op­er­a­tional in the short­est pos­si­ble time, “the Gov­ern­ment will soon be faced with very dif­fi­cult choic­es in terms of main­tain­ing cur­rent lev­els of sub­si­dies, grants, free ser­vices and so­cial pro­grammes.”

This coun­try de­serves sober and re­al­is­tic re­flec­tions on its cur­rent eco­nom­ic po­si­tion and not wild and cyn­i­cal pro­pos­als with no con­crete idea of how these would be fund­ed.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored