Geisha Kow­lessar-alon­zo

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has launched a scathing cri­tique on the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of pre­sid­ing over an eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion.

Speak­ing at a PNM’s press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Im­bert point­ed to the 2025 Re­view of the Econ­o­my—a doc­u­ment laid in Par­lia­ment by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion—as ev­i­dence of a brew­ing cri­sis.

The most se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion lev­elled by Im­bert in­volved a per­ceived “ma­nip­u­la­tion” of eco­nom­ic fig­ures sent to the in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

“Ac­cord­ing to Min­istry of Fi­nance es­ti­mates, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­al GDP is fore­cast to con­tract by 0.8 per cent in 2025, fol­low­ing three con­sec­u­tive years of eco­nom­ic growth. This is Tan­coo’s (Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s) Re­view of the Econ­o­my... Now this touch­es two is­sues, first the gen­tle­man is­sued a press re­lease say­ing that the IMF said that eco­nom­ic growth was ini­ti­at­ed un­der the UNC in 2025, but he says in the re­view that there were three years of con­sec­u­tive growth be­fore he came in, and that the econ­o­my de­clined un­der him.

“One of the oth­er dis­turb­ing things in that IMF state­ment is that they’ve gone and lied to the IMF as well about eco­nom­ic growth. Be­cause if you read that, the IMF is say­ing that the Min­istry of Fi­nance told them the econ­o­my grew by 0.8 per cent in 2025. So they take the mi­nus sign in the Re­view of the Econ­o­my, mi­nus 0.8, and they make it a plus 0.8, and they tell the IMF that the econ­o­my grew in 2025,” Im­bert said.

He fur­ther cit­ed the clo­sure of bars and restau­rants as a vis­i­ble symp­tom of a “trou­bled” econ­o­my, at­tribut­ing the de­cline to oner­ous tax­a­tion and a drop in con­sumer spend­ing.

Warn­ing of a bleak out­look, Im­bert not­ed that the IMF has al­ready la­belled eco­nom­ic risks as “tilt­ed to the down­side.”

He sug­gest­ed that with­out a sound macro­eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy, a cur­ren­cy de­val­u­a­tion may be­come “in­evitable.”

“We were able to keep that promise (not to de­val­ue) be­cause of our macro­eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy,” Im­bert said, con­trast­ing his tenure with the cur­rent di­rec­tion.

In the con­clud­ing state­ment of its Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion re­port on T&T, a team from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund rec­om­mend­ed mea­sures aimed at re­duc­ing the coun­try’s fis­cal deficit:

• ↓These in­clude broad­en­ing the tax base by phas­ing out ex­ten­sive ze­ro rat­ings and ex­emp­tions in the VAT;

• ↓Ac­cel­er­at­ing the re­moval of un­tar­get­ed util­i­ty sub­si­dies while pro­tect­ing the vul­ner­a­ble house­holds;

• ↓Stream­lin­ing trans­fers to state-owned en­ter­pris­es and putting them on a sounder fi­nan­cial foot­ing; and

• ↓Im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and qual­i­ty of pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture.

The aim of the IMF rec­om­men­da­tions is to put T&T’s debt on a down­ward path and re­duce vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.