An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of cre­at­ing a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar pub­lic-sec­tor wage and back­pay bur­den through what he de­scribed as un­re­al­is­tic elec­tion promis­es, warn­ing that the fi­nan­cial pres­sure is al­ready af­fect­ing the de­liv­ery of ba­sic pub­lic ser­vices.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Im­bert claimed that ex­tend­ing a 10 per cent wage in­crease across the wider state sec­tor could push the ar­rears bill be­yond $25 bil­lion, while adding about $1.5 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

He al­so point­ed to a $2.6 bil­lion back­pay li­a­bil­i­ty aris­ing from the 10 per cent in­crease for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers alone, with an ad­di­tion­al $252 mil­lion a year in wages.

Im­bert ar­gued that the ex­pen­di­ture had not been pro­vid­ed for in the orig­i­nal 2026 bud­get or the mid-year re­view.

He claimed the Gov­ern­ment had in­struct­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions to be­gin pay­ing the in­creased salaries by Sep­tem­ber, de­spite the cor­po­ra­tions lack­ing the re­sources to do so.

“The lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions now have to find that mon­ey to pay these in­creased salaries and wages. They don’t have any, so they have to start cut­ting back on es­sen­tial ser­vices, such as garbage col­lec­tion, wa­ter truck­ing and ca­su­al em­ploy­ment,” he main­tained.

Im­bert linked the fi­nan­cial pres­sure to what he de­scribed as de­te­ri­o­rat­ing pub­lic ser­vices, in­clud­ing road re­pairs and main­te­nance.

He ques­tioned the per­for­mance of three fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in which the State has a sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est—First Cit­i­zens Bank, Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank (TTMB) and Re­pub­lic Bank.

Im­bert cit­ed First Cit­i­zens’ re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $645 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, a 10.2 per cent de­cline from $719.6 mil­lion in the same pe­ri­od last year.

He point­ed to TTMB’s $81 mil­lion prof­it af­ter tax for the six months end­ed June 30, 2026, down $13.4 mil­lion or 14.2 per cent year-on-year.

Im­bert linked TTMB’s weak­er per­for­mance to low­er bor­row­ing ac­tiv­i­ty and the wider eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

“No­body’s tak­ing out mort­gage loans. That’s what that lan­guage means,” he ar­gued, re­fer­ring to the bank’s ex­pla­na­tion that re­duced loan orig­i­na­tion vol­umes and high­er fi­nanc­ing costs con­tributed to the de­cline.

He al­so con­trast­ed Re­pub­lic Bank’s 2025 per­for­mance with its more re­cent re­sults, say­ing the group record­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $2.2 bil­lion for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, up $196 mil­lion, or 9.8 per cent, from 2024.

Im­bert fur­ther chal­lenged the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s labour da­ta, claim­ing that 22,000 work­ers from CEPEP, re­for­esta­tion and URP lost their jobs in 2025.

“I have no con­fi­dence in the labour sta­tis­tics any­more,” he de­clared, call­ing on the CSO to ac­count for those work­ers in its da­ta.

Im­bert al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment over in­fra­struc­ture main­te­nance, fo­cus­ing on a large crater on Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval, which he claimed had re­mained for 17 months.

He said the crater, mea­sur­ing about ten feet by five feet, was af­fect­ing com­muters and said the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties had failed to ad­dress the spe­cif­ic prob­lem.

Im­bert end­ed with three rec­om­men­da­tions for the Gov­ern­ment: “Stop ly­ing, get se­ri­ous, do some work in­stead of play­ing and gal­li­vant­i­ng to the me­dia. And three, re­in­state all the PNM pro­grammes that cre­at­ed em­ploy­ment, gave op­por­tu­ni­ties and stim­u­lat­ed eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”