Dur­ing Colm Im­bert’s nine years and six months as T&T min­is­ter of fi­nance—he served in that po­si­tion from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to March 2025—few of his col­leagues in the then Op­po­si­tion chal­lenged his pre­sen­ta­tion of da­ta and sta­tis­tics, ei­ther dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions or dur­ing de­bates in Par­lia­ment.

Mr Im­bert was chal­lenged for many things—in­clud­ing the miser­li­ness of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s of­fer to the pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees and in­creas­ing the price of fu­els on six oc­ca­sions be­tween 2016 and 2022. But, it is clear that he im­ple­ment­ed both poli­cies in the in­ter­est of fis­cal pru­dence and na­tion­al af­ford­abil­i­ty.

On Mon­day this week, in re­sponse to the de­liv­ery by the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, of the 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, Mr Im­bert pre­sent­ed da­ta on two is­sues that this col­umn has an abid­ing in­ter­est in, the per­for­mance of the lo­cal stock mar­ket and T&T’s for­eign re­serves.

On the T&T stock mar­ket

Mr Im­bert said:

“The lo­cal eq­ui­ty mar­ket, which is an in­di­ca­tion of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my, has dropped 12.5 per cent in to­tal val­ue year on year un­der them, Mis­ter Speak­er. Look at bank shares, look at shares of con­glom­er­ates, look at shares of man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies, they have all col­lapsed un­der this gov­ern­ment over the last 12 months...All of us who have shares, and I don’t know if you have shares Mr Speak­er, would have seen the loss in val­ue of our port­fo­lios over the last 12 months un­der this Gov­ern­ment.”

What are the true facts?

On June 12, 2026, the Com­pos­ite In­dex of the T&T Stock Ex­change stood at 992.46. On June 13, 2025, that in­dex, which com­pris­es stocks of com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in T&T, those based out­side of T&T and SMEs, closed at 1,038. That is a de­cline of 4.38 per cent.

The Com­pos­ite In­dex of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) di­rect­ly re­flects the mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the lo­cal stock mar­ket. There­fore, if the Com­pos­ite In­dex de­clined by 4.38 per cent in the June 2025 to June 2026 pe­ri­od, then the mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of shares list­ed on the lo­cal stock al­so de­clined by 4.38 per cent. It is not cor­rect to state that the T&T Stock Ex­change has dropped 12.5 per cent in to­tal val­ue year-on-year un­der them.

The Com­pos­ite In­dex is a cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion-weight­ed in­dex (mar­ket-val­ue-weight­ed), mean­ing com­pa­nies with larg­er to­tal mar­ket val­ues ex­ert a pro­por­tion­al­ly high­er in­flu­ence on its move­ments. Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) is the largest com­pa­ny on the T&T Stock Ex­change, by mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

RFHL trad­ed at $108.50 on June 12, 2026, and at $112.03 on June 13, 2025. That is a de­cline of 3.15 per cent. First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings closed trad­ing at $37.93 on June 12, 2026 and at $43.21. That is a de­cline of 12.21 per cent. And Sco­tia­bank trad­ed at $45.48 on June 12, 2026 and at $52.46 on June 13, 2026. That is a de­cline of 13.30 per cent

Re­gard­ing the two lo­cal­ly head­quar­tered con­glom­er­ates, ANSA McAL $50 on June 12, 2026 and $44 on June 13, 2025. That is an in­crease of 13.63 per cent. Massy Hold­ings was priced at $3.41 in June 2026 and $3.93 on June 2025, which was a de­cline of 13.25 per cent.

Space does not al­low me to con­duct sim­i­lar analy­sis on the sev­en list­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies. But Mr Im­bert would sure have an in­ter­est in the per­for­mance of some of the com­pa­nies that the State has a sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est in.

On June 12 this year, TTNGL closed at $9.99, which was a 165.69 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $3.76 it trad­ed a year ago. Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd in­creased by 113.11 per cent in the year be­tween June 13, 2025 and June 12, 2026. And the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion share price is high­er by 68.67 per cent, mov­ing from $4.15 to $7 in the space of a year.

Is it true to say that “all of us who have shares would have seen the loss in val­ue of our port­fo­lios over the last 12 months un­der this Gov­ern­ment?”

On for­eign re­serves

Mr Im­bert said:

“For­eign re­serves have dropped to US$4.7 bil­lion to­wards the end of the year. Mis­ter Speak­er, they had a lit­tle bump when they went on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and raised US$1 bil­lion in a bond. But they have a pay­ment com­ing up in Au­gust where they will have to pay US$400 mil­lion, that will come out of our re­serves. It will de­press our for­eign re­serves even more. Our re­serves are now the low­est they have been for more than 15 years. The im­port cov­er is now the low­est that it has been for more than 15 years, un­der this ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

The true facts

* T&T’s net of­fi­cial for­eign were be­low US$5 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od Ju­ly to the end of No­vem­ber 2025. At the end of Au­gust 2025, the coun­try’s re­serves amount­ed to US$4.61 bil­lion, which was the low­est re­serves num­ber since March 2006. But re­serves went past US$5 bil­lion in De­cem­ber 2025 and at the end of May 2026, T&T’s net of­fi­cial for­eign re­serves to­talled US$5.24 bil­lion, which is 13.68 per cent high­er than the Au­gust 2025 mul­ti-year low.

In Au­gust 2025, the im­port cov­er was 5.4 months and at the end of May 2026 it was 6.1 months, a small in­crease

* Re­gard­ing im­port cov­er, the Cen­tral Bank has a note in its Da­ta Cen­tre, which states, “In Sep­tem­ber 2025, the im­port cov­er was re­vised from Jan­u­ary 2025, fol­low­ing up­dates to prospec­tive im­ports – the de­nom­i­na­tor used in its cal­cu­la­tion.

In a tech­ni­cal note in its Sep­tem­ber 2025 Eco­nom­ic Dat­a­Pack, the Cen­tral Bank ex­plained:

“Re­serves are de­fined as ex­ter­nal as­sets that are read­i­ly avail­able to and con­trolled by mon­e­tary au­thor­i­ties for meet­ing bal­ance of pay­ments fi­nanc­ing needs, for in­ter­ven­tion in ex­change mar­kets to af­fect the cur­ren­cy ex­change rate, and for oth­er re­lat­ed pur­pos­es (In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, Bal­ance of Pay­ments and In­ter­na­tion­al In­vest­ment Po­si­tion Man­u­al, Sixth Edi­tion, para­graph 6.64).

“Prospec­tive im­ports rep­re­sent im­ports of goods and ser­vices pro­ject­ed for the 12 months fol­low­ing the rel­e­vant time pe­ri­od. Prospec­tive im­ports are usu­al­ly up­dat­ed once a year to in­cor­po­rate changes in eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. Up­dat­ed prospec­tive im­ports lead to re­vi­sions in the Im­port Cov­er (IC).

“In 2025, the Bank re­vised its fore­casts up­wards for 2025, there­by lead­ing to re­vi­sions in the IC. The up­ward re­vi­sion in the prospec­tive im­ports for 2025 re­sult­ed from an ex­pect­ed in­crease in the to­tal im­ports of goods and ser­vices, pri­mar­i­ly re­flect­ing growth in non-en­er­gy im­ports. The uptick in non-en­er­gy im­ports re­flects the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion in do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, cou­pled with still el­e­vat­ed, though con­tained, in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty prices.”

The fact that the Cen­tral Bank re­vised up­ward T&T’s prospec­tive im­ports for 2025, as a re­sult of an ex­pect­ed in­crease in the to­tal im­ports of goods and ser­vices, “pri­mar­i­ly re­flect­ing growth in non-en­er­gy im­ports” is very in­ter­est­ing. That is be­cause an­oth­er of Mr Im­bert’s points is that the non-en­er­gy sec­tor is in de­cline, cit­ing the fact that 92,000 tonnes of ce­ment was sold in this coun­try in the fourth quar­ter.

“And what you are see­ing is a con­trac­tion in the non en­er­gy sec­tor, Mis­ter Speak­er. You have a sit­u­a­tion where the non-en­er­gy sec­tor is con­tract­ing by as much as 10 per cent....And you see it’s easy to talk, eh, but when you go through the num­bers, when you look at the Moody’s re­port, you see that the worst per­form­ing sec­tor of our econ­o­my, which was the best per­form­ing sec­tor of our econ­o­my un­der the PNM, is the non-en­er­gy sec­tor. The worst per­form­ing sec­tor of our econ­o­my is the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Did the Cen­tral Bank mis­cal­cu­late the growth in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor in 2025 in­to 2026?