GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives meets to­day, Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says Gov­ern­ment will be seek­ing more mon­ey, rep­re­sent­ing the high­est lev­el of ex­pen­di­ture ever by any gov­ern­ment in this coun­try’s his­to­ry.

“Hav­ing failed to ac­count for one bil­lion spent last year, this Gov­ern­ment is com­ing to ask for an ad­di­tion­al $2,328,099,600 in ad­di­tion to the $68.4 bil­lion that they al­ready have to spend. This will mean that the Gov­ern­ment would spend $70.7 bil­lion dol­lars in fis­cal 2024,” Tan­coo said while speak­ing at the UNC’s me­dia con­fer­ence at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day.

Not­ing that the $70.7 bil­lion could eas­i­ly ad­dress every sin­gle prob­lem this coun­try is fac­ing – from un­em­ploy­ment, school vi­o­lence, falling stan­dard of liv­ing, poor wa­ter sup­ply, flood­ing and even crime, Tan­coo said even with this amount, it would still re­quire vi­sion and peo­ple-cen­tred gov­er­nance.

Ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert of be­ing fail­ures, Tan­coo said, “To­day, our coun­try’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic health is the worst it has ever been. Our na­tion’s fi­nances are in a com­plete mess thanks to nine years of fail­ure by Colm Im­bert and the PNM.

“Im­bert has crashed our econ­o­my. Every sec­tor is spi­ralling un­con­trol­lably down­wards in­to deep­en­ing fail­ure, cri­sis and col­lapse.”

Tan­coo sde­scribed Im­bert as a “na­tion­al em­bar­rass­ment and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly a lit­tle dic­ta­tor and a colos­sal fail­ure, who seems in­clined to abuse his of­fice and po­si­tion with­out re­morse”.

He claimed he has ex­am­ined the pro­posed ex­pen­di­ture to be fund­ed by the ad­di­tion­al $2.3 bil­lion more that Im­bert wants, and found it will all be used to pay out­stand­ing bills.

“No new projects. No vi­sion. Every sin­gle ex­pen­di­ture that is to be fund­ed by the in­crease was known by the min­is­ter when he de­liv­ered the bud­get speech in Oc­to­ber. He de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­stat­ed the bud­get to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies,” Tan­coo claimed.

“For the ninth time, this min­is­ter has made a com­plete mock­ery of the bud­get­ing process by de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­stat­ing ex­pen­di­ture on­ly to come in the mid-year to in­crease it.”

He fur­ther ac­cused the Fi­nance Min­is­ter of com­ing to pre­dictably tell the coun­try that the “ac­count­ing process is not an ex­act sci­ence”.

How­ev­er, Tan­coo warned that peo­ple need to look at the num­bers.

“Not one red cent of this ad­di­tion­al mon­ey will be spent to cre­ate a sin­gle new project which can earn an in­come to re­pay the bil­lions in bor­row­ing that this Gov­ern­ment is do­ing,” Tan­coo added.

He ref­er­enced Im­bert’s last bud­get speech in which he had told the coun­try, “I pro­pose to pro­vide in 2024 for needy stu­dents in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, us­ing a suit­able means test, a school sup­plies and book grant of $1,000 to as­sist in meet­ing the costs of at­ten­dance at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

“...We es­ti­mate that this school sup­plies and book grant will cost $65 mil­lion in 2024 and will as­sist the par­ents of 65,000 needy stu­dents.”

How­ev­er, Tan­coo said de­spite the an­nounce­ment of this ini­tia­tive not “a sin­gle red cent for this project in the ac­tu­al bud­get for the year” was in­clud­ed.