Jesse Ramdeo

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s 2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is noth­ing but “fluff, lies and re­peat­ed bro­ken promis­es.”

Ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the me­dia out­side the Op­po­si­tion’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain soon af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Bud­get ig­nored what she de­scribed as the harsh re­al­i­ties of the econ­o­my and that Gov­ern­ment was do­ing the ground­work to jus­ti­fy their rea­son for go­ing back to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund.

“It pro­vides no co­gent strate­gic pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions to halt the on­go­ing eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion by gen­er­at­ing new rev­enue streams,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said in­stead of con­crete poli­cies de­signed to get peo­ple back to work and the econ­o­my back to health, the Bud­get was lit­tered with click-bait­ing buzz­words and out­right lies.

“The in­creased fu­el prices will fur­ther raise the cost of liv­ing and food prices. The Min­is­ter has boast­ed that the pop­u­la­tion have not ri­ot­ed yet, so the feel­ings of the peo­ple re­main un­heard.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Bud­get will on­ly has­ten the coun­try’s de­cline in­to chaos and dis­or­der and “sets the stage for dan­ger­ous times ahead.”

Asked whether cer­tain mea­sures an­nounced can have a di­rect im­pact on the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion, she stat­ed, “I know there will be an in­crease in suf­fer­ing. I will not like to say pover­ty is the cause of crim­i­nal­i­ty, there are so many oth­er fac­tors.”

With $210 mil­lion set to be dis­trib­uted to over 20,000 health­care work­ers for their role dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned why no pro­vi­sions were made for po­lice of­fi­cers.

“He talked about a $210 mil­lion for the health sec­tor work­ers, it sounds re­al­ly good, but there is ab­solute­ly no de­tail about who, where, what and it re­minds me of agri­cul­ture in every bud­get, I’m (Colm Im­bert) giv­ing 500 mil­lion dol­lars in in­cen­tives and by the end of the year not a cent was spent.

“There is (sic) no de­tails, it is ab­solute­ly vague. When you re­ward a team with the high­est na­tion­al award and oth­er awards at the Re­pub­lic Day awards, you re­ward them for pre­sid­ing over a coun­try that has one of the high­est death rates in COVID. Why didn’t you give the TTPS, the TTPS were even more bur­dened than the health work­ers.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so took aim at what she de­scribed as “spranger tax­es” or “spranger rev­enue mea­sures,” not­ing the poli­cies will not cre­ate sol­id mea­sures to earn rev­enues.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment has pushed the coun­try in­to a debt trap and de­bunked claims by Im­bert that debt to GDP has been sta­bilised.

She said while it is un­cer­tain yet as to whether she will take her al­lot­ted time to re­spond to the Gov­ern­ment’s bud­get on Fri­day, she said the four-hour long pre­sen­ta­tion by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was un­war­rant­ed.

“Of course, I’ll take my four hours if I can, but that was pure suf­fer­a­tion for peo­ple, to sit down there for four hours and on­ly lis­ten to fluff.”