An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo en­ters to­day’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view fac­ing de­mands from unions, busi­ness groups, po­lice of­fi­cers and the Op­po­si­tion, all seek­ing an­swers on jobs, wages, eco­nom­ic growth and Gov­ern­ment spend­ing as Par­lia­ment pre­pares to ab­sorb an ad­di­tion­al $2.93 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture.

The sup­ple­men­tal al­lo­ca­tion ap­proved last week will in­crease the 2026 Bud­get from $59.232 bil­lion to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $62.162 bil­lion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Tan­coo told Par­lia­ment the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing is large­ly in­tend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate salary in­creas­es and set­tle­ments in­volv­ing 62,050 unionised work­ers. Ahead of the re­view, stake­hold­ers out­lined a grow­ing list of ex­pec­ta­tions for the Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

Man­ning ques­tions fig­ures

For­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment’s re­quest for al­most $3 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fund­ing rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about the ac­cu­ra­cy of the orig­i­nal Bud­get.

“From the vari­a­tion and the sup­ple­men­ta­tion bill, they ask for $3 bil­lion ex­tra,” Man­ning said.

He ar­gued that the de­vel­op­ment strength­ens the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s long-stand­ing crit­i­cism of the 2026 Bud­get.

“Last year, if you lis­ten to the bud­get con­tri­bu­tions, we said from the be­gin­ning that the bud­get pre­sent­ed last year was both fake and fraud­u­lent. And com­ing back here at the mid-year point and ask­ing for $3 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fund­ing gives cre­dence to that ac­cu­sa­tion,” he con­tend­ed.

Man­ning said many of the fig­ures pre­sent­ed dur­ing the orig­i­nal bud­get ex­er­cise did not add up.

“The fig­ures and many of the stats that they gave in the pre­vi­ous bud­get doc­u­ment sim­ply nev­er made sense.”

He added: “The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is ei­ther ex­treme­ly poor at bud­get­ing and fore­cast­ing, or he in­ten­tion­al­ly un­der-bud­get­ed dur­ing the ini­tial bud­get con­tri­bu­tion.”

The Op­po­si­tion MP al­so raised con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nanc­ing strat­e­gy.

“If you look at the ap­pro­pri­a­tion and vari­a­tion, sup­ple­men­ta­tion and vari­a­tion ap­pro­pri­a­tion bill, they have been re­al­ly fund­ing a lot of the op­er­a­tions from bor­rowed mon­ey, debt, and al­so from tak­ing al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars out of the em­ploy­ment fund,” Man­ning stat­ed.

“The em­ploy­ment fund was a half-bil­lion-dol­lar fund es­tab­lished to cre­ate jobs for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. And it has been an ab­ject fail­ure. The fund nev­er func­tioned. It is now de­funct.”

Man­ning al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of Moody’s re­cent de­ci­sion to re­vise Trinidad and To­ba­go’s out­look from neg­a­tive to sta­ble.

“I’m a bit con­cerned about the Moody’s rat­ing. It comes in the wake of the con­tro­ver­sy be­tween them and the NGC, where the Gov­ern­ment threat­ened Moody’s not to use them again as the rat­ing agency for the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny,” he said.

“I find it a bit of a co­in­ci­dence that af­ter all of this con­fu­sion with the NGC, and now just in time for the mid-year re­view, Moody’s gives the Gov­ern­ment an up­grad­ed out­look.”

He not­ed that the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund has ex­pressed dif­fer­ent con­cerns about the econ­o­my.

“For the same econ­o­my, the IMF is say­ing some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. So, I’m a bit con­cerned by Moody’s sud­den change of heart in terms of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my.”

Jobs at the cen­tre

Man­ning said em­ploy­ment must be at the cen­tre of to­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion.

“What we’d like to see re­al­ly is more in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go and more op­por­tu­ni­ties for the cre­ation of em­ploy­ment. Em­ploy­ment would be the num­ber one is­sue in Trinidad and To­ba­go at this point in time.”

He said the con­cerns raised by con­stituents have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the past year.

“While the PNM was in of­fice, I would have peo­ple com­ing to my of­fice ask­ing for a house. It has gone from that to peo­ple com­ing to my of­fice say­ing that they’re un­em­ployed and they can­not find work any­where.”

“Peo­ple have be­come des­ti­tute un­der this Gov­ern­ment,” Man­ning claimed.

He fur­ther ar­gued that the ad­min­is­tra­tion has fo­cused on the wrong rev­enue mea­sures.

“The Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to ig­nore those per­sons who have been dodg­ing tax­es in this coun­try reg­u­lar­ly and fo­cus on re­al­ly starv­ing the poor man and small busi­ness­es in this coun­try with op­pres­sive tax­es.”

Nurs­es seek

salary roadmap

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion Idi Stu­art said health­care work­ers are look­ing for one sim­ple com­mit­ment from the Gov­ern­ment.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion, as we have been re­peat­ed­ly lob­by­ing for, is a sim­ple state­ment from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in­di­cat­ing when health­care work­ers who are em­ployed with the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties would re­ceive a salary in­crease and al­so how it will be de­ter­mined,” Stu­art said.

“That’s all we have been ask­ing for.”

He not­ed that health­care work­ers have con­tin­ued to serve de­spite years with­out salary ad­just­ments.

“We are sim­ply ask­ing just to in­di­cate out of re­spect for the work health­care pro­fes­sion­als have been per­form­ing over a decade, while we re­main on 2013 salaries.”

“If they could just, in that Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, in­di­cate when and how health­care work­ers would re­ceive a salary in­crease.”

Stu­art added: “That is the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty right now for health­care work­ers.”

Teach­ers await back­pay

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe said teach­ers ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to ho­n­our promis­es al­ready made pub­licly.

“I would want to be­lieve that there’s some sort of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween him and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance,” Ashe said.

“So teach­ers are ex­pect­ing the back­pay as would have been promised to them by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in the pub­lic do­main through the me­dia.”

He point­ed out that the time­line pre­vi­ous­ly out­lined by Tan­coo has al­ready passed.

“That has come, and it has gone and we are await­ing the back­pay no lat­er than this Mid-Year Re­view with re­spect to the bud­get,” Ashe re­marked.

CWU wants an­swers

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said work­ers want clar­i­ty on wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and ar­rears.

“It is ex­pect­ed that the Gov­ern­ment will seek to sup­ple­ment al­lo­ca­tions to meet wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and pay ar­rears owed to over 60,000 pub­lic ser­vants,” Ogeer stat­ed.

She not­ed that sev­er­al unions re­main out­stand­ing de­spite pre­vi­ous set­tle­ments in­volv­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion.

“Oth­er trade unions, most no­tably our com­rades in TTUTA, have re­ceived no such con­sid­er­a­tion.”

Ogeer said ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing nurs­es al­so re­main un­re­solved.

The CWU is al­so watch­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and fu­ture tax­a­tion mea­sures.

“It is hoped that the Gov­ern­ment de­sists from im­ple­men­ta­tion of more of these dra­con­ian in­creas­es dur­ing the mid-term re­view,” Ogeer added.

Cham­ber push­es

growth agen­da

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion and in­vest­ment.

“Our mem­bers recog­nise the fis­cal re­al­i­ties fac­ing the coun­try and re­main com­mit­ted to in­vest­ing, em­ploy­ing cit­i­zens, ex­pand­ing ex­ports, and con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” Cham­ber pres­i­dent Karen Yip Chuck said.

“How­ev­er, busi­ness­es across mul­ti­ple sec­tors con­tin­ue to face sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges that are con­strain­ing growth and lim­it­ing their abil­i­ty to con­tribute ful­ly to the econ­o­my.”

The Cham­ber be­lieves growth can­not de­pend sole­ly on fu­ture en­er­gy projects.

“Man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism, agri­cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, lo­gis­tics, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, the cre­ative in­dus­tries and oth­er ex­port-ori­ent­ed sec­tors have demon­strat­ed their abil­i­ty to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

Yip Chuck al­so high­light­ed on­go­ing liq­uid­i­ty and for­eign ex­change con­cerns.

“Busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to iden­ti­fy tight sys­tem liq­uid­i­ty and for­eign ex­change short­ages as ma­jor con­straints on op­er­a­tions, in­vest­ment, and growth.”

She said de­layed VAT re­funds con­tin­ue to af­fect busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The pro­longed de­lay in VAT re­fund pay­ments re­mains one of the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges af­fect­ing busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.”

Fu­el and polic­ing

con­cerns

Ser­vice Sta­tion Own­er Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Reval Chat­ter­goon is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to com­plete and utilise the Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment Liq­uid Fu­els Pipeline fa­cil­i­ty.

In­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the as­so­ci­a­tion in­di­cates that the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd spends ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.4 mil­lion every month trans­port­ing fu­el be­tween Point-a-Pierre and Sea Lots us­ing ma­rine ves­sels.

The as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieves op­er­a­tional­is­ing the fa­cil­i­ty could re­duce costs and free up for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions for busi­ness­es.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Ish­mael Pitt, wants greater at­ten­tion paid to po­lice in­fra­struc­ture and op­er­a­tional re­sources.

“We will want to see an em­pha­sis on po­lice build­ing re­pairs, ba­sic re­sources such as print­er ink and sta­tionery be­ing looked at as just as im­por­tant,” Pitt said.

He al­so called for con­tin­ued train­ing sup­port and recog­ni­tion for of­fi­cers who have worked through­out the State of Emer­gency.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­clined to com­ment ahead of the re­view, say­ing his po­si­tion would be out­lined when he de­liv­ers the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view in Par­lia­ment to­day.