‘Do a crash course’

Quoting the figures outlined in the Review of the Economy 2016 document, Imbert said on Wednesday he was amazed that Opposition MPs consistently get the revenue and expenditure figures for 2016 wrong, every time that they talk about them. He explained the document clearly showed that total revenue for 2016 was $44.9 billion. “It is not $56 billion,” Imbert added. He indicated the same document also shows expenditure and the deficit for 2016 were $52.2 billion and $7.2 billion respectively.

Reminding the Opposition that they were in government for the last five years and some of them served in administrations before that, Imbert declared, “This has been the way which the government fiscal accounts has been reported since I have been a Member of Parliament, which is for 25 years.” Government MPs thumped their desks as he stressed, “Whether it is a UNC (United National Congress) government, a PNM (People’s National Movement) government or a PP (People’s Partnership) government....This is the way the fiscal accounts are reported.”

He told MPs, “When you are doing a budget...if you pay close attention...you will see that the appropriation bill and the figures given in the estimates and the review of the expenditure are slightly different.” Imbert said the reason for this is because, “ you don’t include in the appropriation, capital repayments and sinking fund payments.” He stated, “That is just not done. It is not part of the appropriation because they are charges on the Consolidated Fund and therefore, you don’t appropriate them.”

Imbert further explained that the Infrastructure Development Fund (IDF), “is counted within the estimates of recurrent expenditure as part of the appropriation for the Ministry of Finance.” He said when one is looking at expenditure on the development programme,” you have to simply add the appropriation for the Consolidated Fund.” Against this background, Imbert said Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh was wrong to claim there was $700 million in the IDF which was available for use. “You could only spend what you earn,” he reminded MPs.

After explaining that the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund (HSF), “contains surpluses that have already been appropriated,” Imbert said any money utilised from the HSF, “goes to an area which in government accounting is called below the line.”The minister said the financing element of the budget, “is your deficit and that is below the accounting line.” He continued, “When you use money from the HSF to deal with your expenditure, that goes into your financing component. It is not added to your revenue.” Imbert added, “ So when you take money out of the HSF, you can’t count it as revenue because it is already revenue that was earned in a previous year and has been appropriated.”

As he reminded Opposition MPs that the PP government, “used the exact same rules,” Imbert appealed to them, “Please go and do a simple course in government accounting. Please. I’m begging you because it is embarrassing to come into this Parliament and hear the same errors being made over and over and over.” The minister said the only thing the debate was about was to deal with the use of savings from the fuel subsidy to pay for increases in pensions and grants to senior citizens.