Government is allowing the TT dollar to slide which is wrong, says Opposition MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie.
Commenting on recent statements by the Government on the economy, and expressing concern about the TT dollar, Tewarie said: “They should take a clear, firm position on devaluation buttressed by other coherent, non contradictory policy decisions that are mutually reinforcing, to build back confidence in the economy which they have now fully eroded.
“This is necessary so that investment, economic growth, production and productivity can be positively stimulated to jump start what, after six months of PNM, is a stalled economy. Coherent action and a holistic approach is what we need not irresponsible talk and outright lies.”
Tewarie said for the first time in six months Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley spoke the truth about the state of T&T’s finance when he said Government isn’t bankrupt but had a cash flow problem.
“That is actually what we said from the beginning during the 2016 Budget debate and you can check my response to Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s Budget presentation in the Hansard record.
“But government spokespersons, including the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister, spent the last six months talking about the PP ‘running up the Central Bank overdraft’. This was done precisely because of cash flow problems but this was to be wiped out by flow of funds from the sale of shares from Phoenix Gas Processors, from a payment due from TGU and from taxes due from the energy industry at the end of fourth quarter 2015.
“This was not just to wipe out the Central Bank overdraft but to yield a surplus. The Government knew this but just played the fool misleading our citizens once more, a pattern of behaviour of the PNM leadership which has become a bad and destructive habit.”
Tewarie, a former Planning Minister added: “In the same vein they kept saying we ‘overspent and mismanaged’ in the election year of 2015. When the 2015 accounts were brought to Parliament, there was no additional spending beyond the budgetary allocation and within the budgetary allocation there was only one movement of $200 million in savings from the Energy Ministry to Works to pay for work done on the Point Fortin Highway.
“The problem in T&T today is that the price of oil and gas has dropped dramatically and so has the production of oil and gas. The drop in production is because no new drillings took place for the entire decade before 2010. Because of decisions taken by our Government after 2010 BP invested in Juniper and Juniper will add about 13 per cent more production in the energy sector by the end of 2017 early 2018. This a conservative estimate.”
“The other issue is the need for other sources of revenue and that is where immediate interventions in the energy sector, locally and regionally, become important,” Tewarie said.