DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has la­belled the 2026 Bud­get “fake and fraud­u­lent,” ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion and con­tin­u­ing its elec­tion cam­paign months af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“This at­tempt is strict­ly to ma­m­aguay the pub­lic,” Beck­les said, adding the Bud­get was de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate fur­ther with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF).

She claimed the Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to por­tray it­self as hav­ing achieved suc­cess in a few months, with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing the ground­work laid by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence af­ter the Bud­get was read in Par­lia­ment, Beck­les al­so crit­i­cised the in­tro­duc­tion of a one-time Land­lord Busi­ness Sur­charge, say­ing the mea­sure was a dis­guised ver­sion of a prop­er­ty tax that would in­evitably be passed on to ten­ants. She ques­tioned what had be­come of the more than $130 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax al­ready col­lect­ed and asked how the Gov­ern­ment planned to fund its promised 10 per cent wage in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants.

“It is very clear that they are mis­lead­ing the pub­lic by giv­ing the im­pres­sion that they are giv­ing this 10% over a three-year pe­ri­od and it’s re­al­ly a six-year pe­ri­od,” she said.

She al­so ques­tioned the oil price used.

“Pay close at­ten­tion to the fact that the oil price is $73.25. Any­one can do the search, and you would see right now, de­pend­ing on whether it is Brent, that the price could be un­der $60 or slight­ly over $63,” she said.

Beck­les ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing cred­it for wa­ter projects fund­ed by an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank loan se­cured by the PNM and crit­i­cised its at­tempt to link URP, CEPEP, and Reaf­foresta­tion work­ers to “crim­i­nal gangs.” She not­ed that while the Fi­nance Min­is­ter spoke about full-time em­ploy­ment, there was no al­lo­ca­tion for it.

On new tax­es, Beck­les said, “Yuh giv­ing with one hand and you tak­ing it away with the oth­er.”

She ar­gued that Gov­ern­ment had off­set the $1 re­duc­tion in the price of Su­per gaso­line.
She al­so ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of un­der­min­ing the de­mer­it point sys­tem in­tro­duced un­der the PNM, say­ing new fines for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence were not an ef­fec­tive de­ter­rent.
“We still main­tain that the de­mer­it point is a valid in­ter­ven­tion,” she said, ar­gu­ing that the sys­tem had re­duced road fa­tal­i­ties be­fore it was scrapped.

Im­bert: “Rev­enue fig­ures un­re­al­is­tic”

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert crit­i­cised Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s use of a US$73.25 oil price bench­mark, call­ing it “de­lib­er­ate­ly in­flat­ed.”

“Hav­ing pegged the bud­get on a $73 oil price when he knows that the price should re­al­ly be $53, what he is do­ing is over­es­ti­mat­ing rev­enue de­lib­er­ate­ly so that he can with­draw from the HSF,” Im­bert said.

He warned that the move would deep­en the deficit. “There’s no way he is go­ing to achieve that rev­enue. They say they will col­lect about $56 bil­lion next year—high­ly un­like­ly, es­pe­cial­ly with oil prices as they are,” he added.

Im­bert said re­duc­tions in the price of Su­per gaso­line and ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tions to To­ba­go would cost Gov­ern­ment rough­ly $1 bil­lion in rev­enue.

He al­so ac­cused the ad­min­is­tra­tion of rein­tro­duc­ing the prop­er­ty tax at a high­er rate. “We had re­duced prop­er­ty tax to 2%. They are tax­ing 3 1/2%—it’s as sim­ple as that,” he stat­ed.

Im­bert de­scribed sev­er­al Bud­get mea­sures as con­tra­dic­to­ry, say­ing high­er tax­es on banks, elec­tric­i­ty, land­lords, al­co­hol, and cus­toms charges would ul­ti­mate­ly hurt con­sumers.

“Do not be fooled,” warns for­mer PM

For­mer prime min­is­ter and ex-en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young claimed that every ma­jor project high­light­ed in the en­er­gy sec­tor was ini­ti­at­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said Gov­ern­ment’s as­sump­tions were “gross­ly over­val­ued,” warn­ing that oil and gas pro­duc­tion would re­main low. “You’re go­ing to feel it, so do not be fooled,” he said, ar­gu­ing that high­er elec­tric­i­ty rates for com­mer­cial users would even­tu­al­ly raise con­sumer prices, in­clud­ing rent.

Dhan­paul: “The good, the bad, and the hideous”

For­mer fi­nance tech­no­crat Vish­nu Dhan­paul de­scribed the bud­get as “the good, the bad, and the hideous.”

He wel­comed the de­ci­sion not to tax pri­vate pen­sions but called the NIS sys­tem “bad” and the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal as­sump­tions “hideous.”

“I’ve been in this busi­ness a very long time, and those as­sump­tions used, I can’t see them at the end of this fis­cal year achiev­ing those num­bers, ab­solute­ly not,” he said.

Cit­ing Cen­tral Bank da­ta, Dhan­paul warned that the coun­try’s im­port cov­er had fall­en to 5.4 months—the low­est in decades—with a US$600 mil­lion de­cline in re­serves be­tween April and Au­gust.

“When your bal­ance of pay­ments is in dis­e­qui­lib­ri­um, noth­ing works. Your mon­e­tary pol­i­cy doesn’t work, your fis­cal pol­i­cy just col­laps­es,” he said, warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go could again face IMF in­ter­ven­tion.

To­ba­go “sold short,” says Mi­nor­i­ty Leader

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris said the is­land re­mains dis­ad­van­taged, ar­gu­ing that To­ba­go would have re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al $1 bil­lion had the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill been passed with UNC sup­port.

“In a re­al sense, To­ba­go would have been sold short by a bil­lion,” he said, adding that while To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion in­creased this year, it still fell be­low what was guar­an­teed in the pro­posed bill.

He crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to ad­vance To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and called on the Chief Sec­re­tary to re­spond.

“Desk thump­ing isn’t de­liv­ery”

For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s claims of de­liv­er­ing 18,000 lap­tops to stu­dents, say­ing there was no ev­i­dence of such an achieve­ment.

She said “desk thump­ing does not equate to im­ple­men­ta­tion” and ar­gued that putting po­lice in schools had not solved school vi­o­lence, sug­gest­ing the is­sue was not a true gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ty.