Gail Alexan­der

Bud­get 2023 doc­u­ments which deal with charges on ac­count of the pub­lic debt in­clude es­ti­mates of funds for the Cli­co/British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad Ltd BAT) debt which T&T owes.

How the re­cent­ly spot­light­ed is­sue is be­ing han­dled may be among the items to arise in the up­com­ing Bud­get de­bate.

This con­tin­ues from 10 am to­mor­row with the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s re­ply.

In Ju­ly, An­tigua Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne called on T&T to pay up US$60 mil­lion owed on the Cli­co/BAT li­a­bil­i­ty or risk be­ing sued by East­ern Caribbean coun­tries.

He said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had promised to pay a set­tle­ment of $100 mil­lion but on­ly paid $40 mil­lion. Browne said T&T Gov­ern­ment was writ­ten to on the is­sue twice–mi­nus re­sponse– and a third let­ter was to be sent. If T&T con­tin­ued to treat the mat­ter with con­tempt, there would be no choice but to sue, he’d added

Af­ter claims from “sources” in T&T of “no record of any such cor­re­spon­dence sent to them,” Browne, in Au­gust, pub­licly dou­bled down on his po­si­tion that T&T is li­able to pol­i­cy­hold­ers in An­tigua, fol­low­ing the 2009 Cli­co/BAT col­lapse and he in­sist­ed he’d again writ­ten T&T’s Gov­ern­ment on the mat­ter.

The Cli­co/BAT is­sue is men­tioned in the 2023 Draft Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture and De­tails of Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture.

The doc­u­ments in­clude the lengthy list of en­ti­ties which Gov­ern­ment owes for loans, pay­ments and oth­er items with­in the scope of the pub­lic debt.

Items span a range in­clud­ing fund­ing, bonds and pay­ment for ves­sels, in­clud­ing fer­ries equip­ment, ser­vices, fa­cil­i­ties (in­clud­ing 990m yuan on the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal) and more.

The Cli­co/BAT is­sue is list­ed un­der the Fi­nance Min­istry. It’s stat­ed as “TT$10.4 bil­lion Cli­co/BAT 10.7 per cent Ze­ro Coupon Bond (2012-2031).”

The doc­u­ment states an ac­tu­al fig­ure of $475.408 mil­lion list­ed for 2021, $475,000 mil­lion un­der 2022 es­ti­mates, $469,338 mil­lion un­der 2022 re­vised es­ti­mates and $476,000 mil­lion un­der the 2023 es­ti­mate. The doc­u­ment al­so cit­ed an in­crease of $6.662 mil­lion.

UNC fi­nance spokesman Dave Tan­coo and oth­er UNC MPs said they’re watch­ing Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance and han­dling of debts, loans and oth­er is­sues “which land­ed T&T in the sit­u­a­tion we’re in.”

MP Rush­ton Paray (trade spokesman), at Tues­day’s Bud­get dis­cus­sion mod­er­at­ed by UNC’s Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, said, ”The Bud­get was a cut and paste ex­er­cise. Noth­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter has done in the last sev­en Bud­gets has put T&T in for­ward tra­jec­to­ry.

“We need­ed a bud­get that would have spo­ken to crit­i­cal is­sues: mas­sive job­less­ness; high cost of liv­ing; col­lapse of small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es; lack of in­vest­ment in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor; and run­away crime. None were ad­dressed in a philo­soph­i­cal man­ner which would give hope to the pop­u­la­tion.”

UNC deputy leader Jear­lean John said she was struck by the lack of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the bud­get.

She said, “Gov­ern­ment ap­pears very cyn­i­cal and ar­ro­gant. But we have to be very con­cerned about job cre­ation. It was hoped the con­struc­tion sec­tor would be in­cen­tivised which would al­so boost the cir­cu­lar flow of in­come so mon­ey can be spent in the lo­cal econ­o­my.”