The state of the econ­o­my is not a sur­prise to econ­o­mists and oth­er fi­nan­cial ex­perts around the coun­try.

How­ev­er, they al­so say the new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s plans to ad­dress grow­ing deficits and in­crease rev­enues must go be­yond dip­ping in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­sa­tion Fund (HSF) in the short term.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the coun­try has a $4.42 bil­lion deficit for May and a pro­ject­ed $11 bil­lion deficit for this fis­cal year. She blamed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the sit­u­a­tion, say­ing her min­is­ters, on en­ter­ing their min­istries this week, found that the bud­gets for this fis­cal year had al­ready been spent.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at a pro­pos­al to draw down on the re­main­ing $2.7 bil­lion in the Cen­tral Bank’s over­draft fa­cil­i­ty, re­fi­nanc­ing a min­i­mum of 60 per cent of Trea­sury bills due in May, a $1.76B draw­down from the HSF and ad­di­tion­al bor­row­ing of $1B to fund the deficit.

Ad­dress­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim yes­ter­day, econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon said, “We have to recog­nise the state of the econ­o­my, the state of the rev­enue side, the ex­pen­di­ture com­mit­ments.”

Point­ing out that the coun­try had been run­ning a fis­cal deficit for over 10 years, he added, “We have been aware that oth­er econ­o­mists have, in fact, been point­ing to this pri­or to the elec­tion, so there’s a con­sis­ten­cy, if you like, in the recog­ni­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go is in a dif­fi­cult place in more ways than one. Re­al­ly, what is re­quired now is the poli­cies that would be­gin to cor­rect and to ad­dress the is­sues.”

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon point­ed out that the Cen­tral Bank da­ta had clear­ly shown a deficit which had been widened over time, par­tic­u­lar­ly with in­creased gov­ern­ment spend­ing ahead of the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

He said, “The new ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­its a wor­ry­ing fis­cal land­scape – the fig­ures giv­en by the PM for April and May show a to­tal deficit of $5.25 bil­lion, while the CBTT’s fis­cal da­ta show a to­tal deficit from Oc­to­ber 2024 to Feb­ru­ary 2025 of $3.12 bil­lion.

“While the da­ta for March is not avail­able from CBTT, if we add these val­ues, it shows a to­tal deficit of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8.37 bil­lion, ex­clud­ing March ... high­light­ing an ur­gency for rais­ing funds in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

Ramkissoon, how­ev­er, urged that the Gov­ern­ment show cau­tion with re­gard to the sug­gest­ed use of the HSF in re­la­tion to the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

“Our fund, the HSF, is not where it ought to have been. We ought to have been sav­ing in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion fund for a long time. It is our sav­ings, and if we are go­ing to (dip in­to the fund), we have to be care­ful that we do not de­plete our sav­ings. There are ad­just­ments that we as a so­ci­ety need to make on the con­sump­tion side, on the wastage side. The ad­just­ments we have to make on that side, on de­lays in cer­tain ex­pen­di­tures that we can­not af­ford. And we’ve got to pay at­ten­tion to that while we quick­ly seek to bring in rev­enues in the short, medi­um and long term.”

Dr Ar­joon agreed that Gov­ern­ment should look at vary­ing mea­sures to ad­dress its rev­enue short­falls and chip away at debt.

“They could al­so con­sid­er new rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ways that will not in­crease debt, by mon­etis­ing some state as­sets through, for ex­am­ple, a re­al es­tate in­vest­ment trust, which would bun­dle se­lect­ed gov­ern­ment build­ings and un­der-utilised land in­to an in­come-pro­duc­ing port­fo­lio open to in­vestors – un­lock­ing im­me­di­ate cap­i­tal and de­liv­er­ing a steady div­i­dend stream to the Trea­sury,” the econ­o­mist said.

For­mer banker and Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte al­so felt the Gov­ern­ment should fo­cus on re­duc­ing wast­ed ex­pen­di­ture. How­ev­er, he did find promis­ing sug­ges­tions in some of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments.

“What (The Prime Min­is­ter) found is what I will have ex­pect­ed her to find. I agree that we need to start to trim all of our ex­pen­sive ex­pen­di­ture, all of our ex­pen­di­ture that is non-nec­es­sary ex­pen­di­ture. So the ap­proach that she is tak­ing, I con­sid­er it to be laud­able in try­ing to cut back that,” he said, not­ing it would al­so af­fect some of the UNC’s elec­tion promis­es.

He added, “I think that would be a chal­lenge over the pe­ri­od, now, hav­ing been faced with the re­al­i­ty of man­age­ment. How is she go­ing to go about ful­fill­ing her cam­paign promis­es in light of the re­al­i­ty that she is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing?”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said he would re­spond in de­tail next week but said the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments, “re­vealed some un­fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the fis­cal ac­counts.”

He, how­ev­er, added that he would on­ly have da­ta up to the end of his tenure on March 17 and point­ed to his suc­ces­sor in the Fi­nance Min­istry Vish­nu Dhan­paul for da­ta up to the end of April. Dhan­paul opt­ed not to com­ment when con­tact­ed.