PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Re­cent wage in­creas­es to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers have been iden­ti­fied by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) as a po­ten­tial hur­dle for eco­nom­ic growth in T&T in 2026.

In the con­clud­ing state­ment of the 2026 Ar­ti­cle IV mis­sion for T&T, the IMF staff said de­spite the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tiontak­ing of­fice in May 2025 with an em­pha­sis on eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion, there was con­sid­er­able un­cer­tain­ty about the do­mes­tic econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the short term.

'Un­der the cur­rent out­look for en­er­gy prices, agreed set­tle­ment of back­pay oblig­a­tions to pub­lic sec­tor union work­ers and ad­di­tion­al hir­ing of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers in Oc­to­ber 2025, such a large ad­just­ment would be very dif­fi­cult to im­ple­ment with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­en­ing growth," said the IMF mis­sion's con­clud­ing state­ment

The IMF state­ment added, "The eco­nom­ic out­look is sub­ject to con­sid­er­able un­cer­tain­ty, and the bal­ance of risks is tilt­ed to the down­side in the near term and to the up­side in the long term. Do­mes­tic risks to growth and the ex­ter­nal sec­tor stem from low­er oil and gas pro­duc­tion, which could re­sult from dis­rup­tions in ma­ture fields or de­lays in new projects. "

On Mon­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is­sued a state­ment when he framed the IMF's as­sess­ment as large­ly pos­i­tive with re­gard to the gov­ern­ment's plans to re­vi­talise the econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert, said there were warn­ings in the IMF state­ment.

" The IMF has en­cour­aged them to de­val­ue the cur­ren­cy and they have made state­ments in there, they have said the eco­nom­ic risks for Trinidad and To­ba­go are tilt­ed to the down­side. Now that is jar­gon for the out­look is bleak. That is what the IMF is re­al­ly say­ing. And if they don't par­take is fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion, if you read it, then the cur­ren­cy is go­ing to be in trou­ble," said Im­bert, who ac­knowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment has stat­ed it is not seek­ing to de­val­ue the TT dol­lar at this time. How­ev­er, he ex­plained that the wage in­creas­es do not fall in line with fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion.

"They were told by the per­son­nel de­part­ment that if you give one group of work­ers 10 per cent you had to give every­body. And the back­pay re­quire­ment for that is $17 bil­lion by the way. And the in­crease in an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture is $3 to $4 bil­lion. So they are not con­trol­ling ex­pen­di­ture. That's the sim­ple point I'm mak­ing," said Im­bert.

He said what the IMF is say­ing is that un­less the cur­rent this gov­ern­ment gets its act to­geth­er and stops wast­ing mon­ey on non­sense, the econ­o­my is go­ing to be in trou­ble. The ef­fect of ex­ces­sive spend­ing by the gov­ern­ment on the ex­change rate would then be in­evitable," Im­bert said, pro­vid­ing his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the IMF state­ment.

"But the UNC has said they're not de­valu­ing. I said that for 10 years, and I didn't, be­cause I was able to do it, be­cause I had a good macro­eco­nom­ic team which sup­port­ed me, and we had very sound macro-eco­nom­ic poli­cies."

The for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter al­so point­ed to the ANSA McAL group's de­ci­sion to with­draw from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion as a red flag, as he not­ed the gov­ern­ment had im­ple­ment­ed poli­cies that would hin­der growth in cru­cial sec­tors.

He said,"The most dis­turb­ing de­ci­sion of the gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly has been the in­crease in the cost of nat­ur­al gas by 70 plus per cent and for the first time I saw a con­glom­er­ate come out and make a very pow­er­ful state­ment. This is the ANSA McAL group and they that they are go­ing to leave the TTMA be­cause they felt that it had not done a good job ex­plain­ing to the gov­ern­ment that this was a very dan­ger­ous move on the part of the gov­ern­ment"

The Diego Mar­tin North/East MP con­tin­ued, "How is the gov­ern­ment to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, stim­u­late the econ­o­my when all the ar­eas tar­get­ed for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, tourism and man­u­fac­tur­ing (are un­der pres­sure). Those are the main ar­eas that a coun­try would want to tar­get for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. You would want to grow your ex­port man­u­fac­tur­ers and I think you would want to grow your tourism in­dus­try."