Tancoo tells Imbert: Face the facts
Instead of accounting to the population for the $25 billion contraction of the real economy over the last 6 years despite spending $300 billion, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert continues to desperately try to deflect public attention away from the social and economic crisis to which he has brought Trinidad and Tobago.
So said MP for Oropouche West Davendranath Tancoo, commenting on a tweet issued by Imbert immediately following the UNC Weekly Media Conference held on Sunday 8th August, 2021.
Tancoo said “For the avoidance of doubt, nobody at the Opposition press conference asked Imbert “to stop borrowing and limit expenditure to current revenue…or increase borrowing and give away money to all and sundry”. To even suggest otherwise is incorrect and patently untrue. Minister Imbert must face the facts. The Minister’s refusal to accept the reality that this country is in economic and social distress has caused him to perpetuate his misaligned policies digging us deeper into crisis.
Tancoo said the Minister was asked to tell the country whether it was true that he was forced to withdraw from the HSF because he had bankrupted the Consolidated Fund to the point where he could not write a cheque to pay recurrent monthly bills. Further, the Minister was asked to explain to citizens why the Government had abandoned its own highly publicized Roadmap to Recovery post Covid-19 recovery plan immediately after election and appeared to have no plan going forward. More than that, Tancoo said, both he and MP Paray offered suggestions for lifting the country out of the hole in which the Minister’s policies have placed this country.
What the population wants and deserves is a Minister of Finance who is upfront, honest and straightforward with the state of the country. Instead, the Minister continues to claim that the country is doing well despite the fact that the Minister’s performance since 2015 has resulted in a continuous fall in the Standard and Poors credit rating and associated loss of investor confidence, capital flight, runaway debt, mass unemployment, the collapse of the real economy and growing poverty throughout the country.
Tancoo said Minister Imbert has failed to sustain the growth of the economy long before the Covid pandemic and has no one to blame but himself for this financial mess. No amount of fabrications, posturing or conjecture can change that fact.