Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Deputy Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment leader Colm Im­bert claims there’s a re­cent Cab­i­net minute show­ing the Gov­ern­ment took a to­tal of $1.3 bil­lion meant for loans to con­duct crit­i­cal work at State agen­cies and used it to as­sist in fund­ing for the last two months of fis­cal 2025.

And PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says she un­earthed a pur­port­ed cir­cu­lar from the Fi­nance Min­istry call­ing for all state agen­cies and statu­to­ry bod­ies to pro­vide the min­istry with de­tails of all cash and cash equiv­a­lents they hold.

“This Cab­i­net minute tells me the Gov­ern­ment is broke!” de­clared Im­bert dur­ing a PNM meet­ing in Mor­vant on Tues­day.

“Some­thing is wrong. They’re scrap­ing!” Beck­les added.

How­ev­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­e­dranath Tan­coo has rub­bished the Op­po­si­tion’s al­le­ga­tions, call­ing it “po­lit­i­cal mis­chief.”

Im­bert claimed the Gov­ern­ment has not hired any new Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme con­trac­tors since it has no mon­ey.

“The Gov­ern­ment is broke!”

He cit­ed the Au­gust 7 Cab­i­net minute, say­ing it didn’t come from the Fi­nance Min­istry.

The minute was head­ed “Ap­proval for the trans­fer of funds held in es­crow for 16 Gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loans to the Trea­sury to as­sist Gov­ern­ment with Fund­ing for the re­main­ing months of fis­cal year 2025” and in­clud­ed:

$200m Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (se­ries of crit­i­cal­ly need­ed projects all over T&T from box drains to land­slip re­pairs)

$500m for NIPDEC’s road up­grad­ing projects

MTS loans for school con­struc­tion

$50m NID­CO loan (mi­cro /small busi­ness grants scheme and across NID­CO’s branch net­work)

$200m Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es loan (to ser­vice build­ing lots for ex-Petrotrin work­ers)

$150m Land Set­tle­ment Agency (hous­ing/vil­lage im­prove­ment pro­gramme)

$350m WASA loan (for crit­i­cal pipeline/pump re­place­ment pro­gramme)

$200m HDC loans (for out­stand­ing bills and con­tin­ued hous­ing).

Im­bert claimed, “All these loans had a pur­pose, to pay off bills owed to con­trac­tors and con­tin­ue crit­i­cal Gov­ern­ment pro­grammes. Look at what they do since they en­tered of­fice. They freeze all the loans. HDC still owes mon­ey to con­trac­tors and has thou­sands of un­fin­ished hous­es, roads still need paving, and schools still need to be built, com­plet­ed, and re­paired. They can­cel all! They didn’t spend one cent out of those loans!”

Im­bert al­so al­leged that no one wants to lend the Gov­ern­ment mon­ey. He read from the Cab­i­net note: “Based on cur­rent liq­uid­i­ty lev­els, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T’s abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly or read­i­ly ac­cess funds on the do­mes­tic mar­ket has been se­vere­ly con­strained.”

He added, “That’s tech­ni­cal lan­guage for the banks ent want to lend them no mon­ey.”

Im­bert won­dered if the “forced de­par­ture” of First Cit­i­zen Bank’s CEO was be­cause she did not want to ex­ceed the bank’s loan lim­it and breach Cen­tral Bank reg­u­la­tions, “And they were de­mand­ing she give them bil­lions - and she couldn’t.”

“They suck out all the mon­ey the PNM gov­ern­ment made avail­able to all these state en­ter­pris­es to deal with all these crit­i­cal mat­ters. How they pay­ing that now? And they put it in the (Gov­ern­ment) bank ac­count just to try and pay salaries in Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber.

“This tells me the Gov­ern­ment is broke - has no mon­ey. So I’m not sur­prised they don’t have mon­ey for goods and ser­vices or pay­ing salaries,” Im­bert claimed.

Mean­while, Beck­les claimed a Fi­nance Min­istry cir­cu­lar has re­quest­ed that all state agen­cies and statu­to­ry bod­ies tell the min­istry de­tails of all cash and cash equiv­a­lent they hold as of Ju­ly 31, 2025. It al­so called on the agen­cies to make this a month­ly prac­tice.

“Sim­ply, they want to know how much mon­ey all of these agen­cies have! And you know what that means - they’re scrap­ing!” she said.

“They’re there for 100 days, and you get­ting salary late. Poor pen­sion­ers, no mon­ey, even UNC’s own cor­po­ra­tions - Ma­yaro, no mon­ey. Clear ev­i­dence they can’t do the job and run T&T!”

Beck­les said the no­tice is­sued by the Fi­nance Min­istry on Tues­day looked like some­thing was wrong.

“They can’t check, they’re not sure how much mon­ey they have, and any­body with mon­ey, they want it.”

Beck­les added, “I’m not the Fi­nance Min­is­ter or a fi­nan­cial ex­pert, but some­thing wrong! When you put square pegs in round holes, you go­ing to have trou­ble. Every gov­ern­ment might have a few square pegs, but like their whole Gov­ern­ment is square pegs!”

She said some who once said Im­bert was “stingy” are now wish­ing he was still Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

“For 10 years with him, you ever get a late salary?” she asked, to a re­sound­ing “NO!” from at­ten­dees.

Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter al­lud­ed to God and faith in re­ply­ing to a ques­tion about the promised 10 per cent wage of­fer for pub­lic ser­vants.

“But when they of­fered it, they didn’t call God’s name. I say to the Prime Min­is­ter, time to wake from your slum­ber. If you can’t run T&T, let peo­ple who can run it, do so!”

Tan­coo: PNM pro­mot­ing non­sense and mis­chief

But yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Tan­coo de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal man­age­ment and dis­missed Im­bert’s claims as po­lit­i­cal mis­chief.

“I am proud to say that this Gov­ern­ment is meet­ing its oblig­a­tions to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and will con­tin­ue to do so,” Tan­coo said.

“I am sad­dened but not sur­prised that this so dis­turbs Im­bert and his PNM Leader, who are ob­vi­ous­ly bent on a cam­paign of mis­chief and mis­in­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, this Gov­ern­ment is sup­port­ive and re­spect­ful of a work­ers’ agen­da and on re­build­ing the econ­o­my, and re­turn­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to pros­per­i­ty.”

Tan­coo added that the coun­try could ex­pect noth­ing pos­i­tive from the Op­po­si­tion, ac­cus­ing them of fight­ing against every ini­tia­tive of the ad­min­is­tra­tion to tack­le crime and im­prove cit­i­zens’ lives.

“The PNM decade of de­struc­tion speaks for it­self. They have no ideas and no plans, and ob­vi­ous­ly, it both­ers them that the coun­try has not col­lapsed in a heap of blood and bank­rupt­cy. The PNM now stands for Pro­mot­ing Non­sense and Mis­chief. I re­al­ly hope that at some time, Im­bert and his gang grow past the ta­ban­ca and start work­ing in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Nonethe­less, the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to suc­ceed, and if that dis­turbs the PNM gang, they should just get out of the way of progress,” Tan­coo said.