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Saturday, July 26, 2025

?Manning: T&T still in difficult situation

by

20100209

This coun­try is still in a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning said on Mon­day night.

Ad­dress­ing a PNM Laven­tille meet­ing, Man­ning gave a brief in­sight in­to the coun­try's fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. He said last year was a dif­fi­cult year for T&T and the world due to falling oil and gas prices. He told Laven­tille res­i­dents that not on­ly was their area af­fect­ed by the sit­u­a­tion, but all of T&T al­so. Man­ning said T&T was pass­ing through a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od. "We're still in it," he said. Man­ning said rev­enue fell to the ex­tent that when the last bud­get was pre­sent­ed, a short­fall of $8,450 mil­lion was pro­ject­ed. Gov­ern­ment closed the year with a deficit of $6,900 mil­lion, which, he said, was "still plen­ty mon­ey." This year, he said, Gov­ern­ment ex­pects a deficit of $7,800 mil­lion, which, he al­so said, was "plen­ty of mon­ey." He said Gov­ern­ment had cut back on ex­pen­di­ture and es­tab­lished new pri­or­i­ties.

How­ev­er, Man­ning as­sured Laven­tille that the area has not been for­got­ten. Last week, the Fi­nance Min­istry met on new pri­or­i­ties for de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing wa­ter and roads. He said projects may have to be fund­ed by bor­row­ings and that Gov­ern­ment will close­ly mon­i­tor the ex­tent. Man­ning out­lined the sta­tus of oth­er Cari­com states where bor­row­ings are con­cerned. This is mea­sured on their debt to gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) ra­tio. The oth­ers is­lands' sta­tis­tics ranged from 67 per cent to 180 per cent. Man­ning said T&T's lev­el was on­ly 29 per cent. If T&T bor­rows for fu­ture projects, Man­ning said the fig­ure may reach 56 per cent which, he said, was "quite tol­er­a­ble" since T&T has nat­ur­al re­sources with which to re­pay. Man­ning added, "The IMF (In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund) will look at us close­ly, but they wouldn't baulk.... there's a plan for bor­row­ing. Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands what it is do­ing. I've been in Gov­ern­ment for 38 years, I not 'voop­ing'–if you watch me, is no day­light be­tween bat and pad. You can't see the wick­et at all."


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