Kamla sees $8B shortfall

Among this sum, she said were $6.3 billion in revenues not realised, a $0.5 billion shortfall from the recent additional public offering (APO) of shares in FCB, plus some $0.5 billion in Property Tax that she said it is unrealistic to expect the Government to be able to collect this year. Saying the country has about 400,000 households, she said the mere 51 valuation surveyors registered at the Institute of Surveyors are insufficient to do all these assessments of Property Tax due. “I can’t see any way he (Finance Minister Colm Imbert) will get the 180 to 240 valuators needed to evaluate the property tax.” Persad-Bissessar hit back at Imbert over which government ran up the public debt the most. She said the former People’s Partnership (PP) had moved the figure from $45.4 billion (in 2010) to $76.5 billion (in 2015) but compared to this five-year period, the People’s National Movement had taken the debt to $89.1 billion in just 18 months.

“Is this sustainable, the debt-to-GDP ratio? We really are on the edge of a cliff. The Minister gave us no policy, no programme to get out.” She bemoaned that much of TT’s Public Debt was accrued by external borrowing, meaning its repayment must be by way of foreign exchange which is now in short supply.

“You (Imbert) diagnosed the problem but have not said what is the medicine to get us out of recession.” Saying Imbert has not ordered the cutting of items, she asked how he would balance the books, such as by more drawdowns from the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund.

While Moody’s had hit the Government for failing to diversify the economy, she wondered whether the Government now intends to try to literally “pay” another credit rating agency, Fitch, to get a good rating? Regarding TSTT’s purchase of Massy Technologies, she refused to believe that this deal was not known of beforehand by either Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley or Minister in the Office of Prime Minister Stuart Young even as TSTT chairman Emile Elias claimed not to have told Cabinet. She asked how Corporation Sole, Finance Minister Colm Imbert, could not know of this quarter billion dollar expenditure ($255 million) even as the country reels from a lack of medicines in public hospitals and a lack of water supply.

She criticised the Government’s diversion of $2.5 billion from the Infrastructure Development Fund (IDF) as “scandalous”. Regarding the status of the Procurement Regulator, Persad-Bissesar said she’d like to see the reported letter from President Anthony Carmona that had purportedly requested government help to recruit this official.