Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo said the in­creased al­lo­ca­tion to the 2025 Bud­get which will be ex­am­ined in Par­lia­ment to­day is nec­es­sary be­cause of pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s un­der bud­get­ing.

The Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) will meet this af­ter­noon to ex­am­ine ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for min­istries and di­vi­sions up to the end of the 2025 fis­cal year in Sep­tem­ber. The 2026 Bud­get, which will be pre­sent­ed af­ter that, has to be in place by the end of Oc­to­ber.

Last Sat­ur­day, sources hint­ed that the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing be­ing sought to­day is like­ly to be ap­prox­i­mate­ly just over $3 bil­lion for about 28 key min­istries and di­vi­sions, in­clud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

In a re­lease last Tues­day fol­low­ing PNM claims of job loss at re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, the Health Min­istry stat­ed that “pru­dent over­sight is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant in light of the RHAs’ col­lec­tive re­quest for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400 mil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fund­ing to ad­dress aged payables sub­mit­ted for the mid-year bud­get re­view.”

Tan­coo did not give any fig­ures or pro­vide de­tails say­ing he didn’t wish to pre-empt to­day’s meet­ing.

“The SFC meet­ing is to go through the in­creased al­lo­ca­tion and to an­swer Op­po­si­tion ques­tions about de­tails if re­quest­ed. I’ll be re­served un­less pro­voked. Re­mem­ber, this is to ad­dress their un­der-bud­get­ing for 2025,” he said.

Tan­coo said Wednes­day’s de­bate of the fund­ing mat­ter in the mid-year re­view of the Bud­get “will have more fire.”

The 2025 Bud­get pre­sent­ed last Oc­to­ber by for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­lo­cat­ed top dol­lar to Ed­u­ca­tion, Health, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Util­i­ties, among oth­ers. It was pegged on an oil price of US$77.80 and gas price of US$3.59 per MMB­tu. A deficit of $5.6 bil­lion was pro­ject­ed.

On en­ter­ing of­fice, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the deficit might now be around $11 bil­lion and de­tailed ways her ad­min­is­tra­tion would han­dle it.

In SFC meet­ings be­fore the mid-year re­views in 2022, 2023 and 2024, Im­bert had sought ad­di­tion­al $3.1 bil­lion, $3.58 bil­lion and $2.3 bil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly, to sup­ple­ment funds for var­i­ous di­vi­sions.

Tan­coo, then the Op­po­si­tion’s Fi­nance spokesman, had crit­i­cised Im­bert’s plan­ning.

Wednes­day’s re­view will sum­marise T&T’s po­si­tion fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2025 Bud­get last Oc­to­ber and, apart from the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing, will give the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to go for­ward.

Tan­coo said: “The fis­cal and fi­nan­cial in­com­pe­tence of the so called di­a­bol­i­cal duo, Colm Im­bert and Bri­an Man­ning, has placed T&T un­der se­vere dis­tress and debt.

“Peo­ple must nev­er for­get or for­give the PNM for the econ­o­my’s de­struc­tion. But all isn’t lost, the UNC has al­ready demon­strat­ed will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty and is def­i­nite­ly up to the chal­lenge.

“We’ll fix it. We have a plan with which we’re work­ing. T&T’s in the safe, clean hands of the UNC’s team led by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar,”

He de­clined de­tails of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan or the new mea­sures in Wednes­day’s re­view.

Last Sat­ur­day, some trade union of­fi­cials said they were await­ing the re­view, which ar­rives ahead of Thurs­day’s Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions, to see what’s forth­com­ing with pub­lic ser­vants’ pay­ments and oth­er labour is­sues.

They ac­knowl­edged that the UNC kept its cam­paign promise to re­move the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA). A bill to re­peal the TTRA Act was passed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.