DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has sig­nalled that Gov­ern­ment will not ac­cept any rec­om­men­da­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) that un­der­mines its de­vel­op­ment agen­da for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Tan­coo con­firmed that he met IMF rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week as part of the Fund’s Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion, a rou­tine as­sess­ment that al­lows IMF econ­o­mists to ex­am­ine a coun­try’s fi­nances, meet with of­fi­cials and eval­u­ate the sta­bil­i­ty of in­fla­tion, debt and eco­nom­ic growth. In the Caribbean, such re­views of­ten in­flu­ence cred­it rat­ings and in­vestor con­fi­dence.

Tan­coo ac­knowl­edged that IMF con­sul­ta­tions typ­i­cal­ly pro­duce rec­om­men­da­tions such as re­duc­ing trans­fers, sub­si­dies and de­valu­ing na­tion­al cur­ren­cies. In some cas­es, it can al­so in­clude re­struc­tur­ing state-owned en­ter­pris­es and even in­creas­ing the re­tire­ment age. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said those pre­scrip­tions do not al­ways align with the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties.

“The IMF has its own meth­ods and cal­cu­la­tions to jus­ti­fy their rec­om­men­da­tions, but Gov­ern­ment is nev­er about math­e­mat­ics and num­bers. It is about im­prov­ing the lives of cit­i­zens and that re­quires a kind of cre­ativ­i­ty and peo­ple fo­cus that the IMF math­e­mat­ics do not (con­sid­er),” he said.

“So, while we will take note of what the IMF says, we will not al­low them to dic­tate our de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives.”

Tan­coo point­ed to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ man­i­festo, its Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, the planned tran­si­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor and re­cent pub­lic pol­i­cy state­ments as ev­i­dence that Gov­ern­ment is al­ready re­spond­ing to pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

“I think this coun­try un­der­stands that the PNM left us in a fi­nan­cial­ly dif­fi­cult po­si­tion with mas­sive debt lev­els and an econ­o­my in need of re­sus­ci­ta­tion. Un­der the able lead­er­ship of the Hon Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, we have frontal­ly tak­en on the chal­lenge and I be­lieve that we are al­ready see­ing pos­i­tive move­ments to­wards the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try that we all want.”

When asked whether the IMF had as­sessed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign re­serves or made any pro­nounce­ment, Tan­coo said the Fund had re­quest­ed ex­ten­sive in­for­ma­tion and held sev­er­al meet­ings. On the spe­cif­ic ques­tion of whether he had re­ject­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of de­valu­ing the TT dol­lar, he said no de­ci­sion had yet been tak­en.

“I await their 2026 ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion re­port and rec­om­men­da­tion be­fore I re­spond,” he said.

The is­sue of de­val­u­a­tion was a po­lit­i­cal talk­ing point in the lead-up to last year’s elec­tion. On April 2, 2025, then prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young warned that a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion could see the US dol­lar de­val­ued to $15. That claim was strong­ly re­ject­ed by the UNC, then in op­po­si­tion.

Works min­istry out­lines re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan

The Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture con­firmed it al­so en­gaged the IMF mis­sion.

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John pre­sent­ed the gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print to the IMF del­e­ga­tion, led by Anas­ta­sia Gus­ci­na, deputy chief of the Caribbean Di­vi­sion I in the Fund’s West­ern Hemi­sphere De­part­ment.

In a state­ment, the min­istry said dis­cus­sions fo­cussed on the Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy for eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, an­chored in in­fra­struc­ture re­new­al, com­pet­i­tive­ness and the cre­ation of con­di­tions for sus­tained growth. Talks al­so cov­ered labour force plan­ning, fi­nan­cial mod­els to at­tract in­vestors and po­ten­tial in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Min­is­ter John said the ap­proach was aimed at strength­en­ing the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“This is a de­lib­er­ate move to raise our stan­dards and ex­pand our ca­pa­bil­i­ties so that Trinidad and To­ba­go can com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­place. We are build­ing a mod­ern, skilled work­force sup­port­ed by strong in­sti­tu­tions, clear pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, and a sta­ble in­vest­ment en­vi­ron­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Plan is pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate up to 72,000 jobs at peak roll­out, re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on the lo­cal skilled and se­mi-skilled labour force. The pro­gramme is de­signed to max­imise do­mes­tic tal­ent while strength­en­ing tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty across key sec­tors.

The gov­ern­ment al­so plans to pur­sue strate­gic for­eign part­ner­ships to sup­port knowl­edge trans­fer, ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies and in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices. Of­fi­cials say these part­ner­ships will cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for train­ing and skills up­grad­ing, po­si­tion­ing the work­force to op­er­ate at glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive stan­dards.

The min­istry said the en­gage­ment with the IMF forms part of the gov­ern­ment’s broad­er in­ter­na­tion­al out­reach, sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth and ad­vance na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.