Kamla: Budget ‘statistical gymnastics’

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar says there has been no economic turnaround as Finance Minister Colm Imbert has claimed, but he engaged in “statistical gymnastics.”

She was responding to the 2018/2019 budget in the Parliament yesterday in a presentation entitled At the Crossroads of History – A Nation in Crisis: A Government in Collapse; A People Betrayed.

She said Imbert, with a puffed-up chest, and smirking, boasted the economy was projected to grow by 1.9 per cent in 2019, thanks to his sound fiscal management. But she said based on Government’s own statistics presented in budget documents on Monday the Opposition found evidence of statistical gymnastics by the Finance Minister.

“Far from expansion, in the last three years the economy has shrunk, has contracted in real terms, thanks to their policies.”

She reported in 2015 real GDP was $170.4 billion, but in 2018, after three years of the PNM Government, under Imbert in 2018 it was $159.2 billion, a reduction of $11.2 billion.

“But the Minister of Finance boasts of recovery.

“But we have the figures now and it is on the Ministry of Finance website and we can see clearly now, there is no recovery.”

She said under this Government the economy contracted by 6.5 per cent in the last three years, and what accounted for the increased GDP figures between last year and this year was a 30.7 per cent increase in taxes less subsidies on products.

Persad-Bissessar said it was disingenuous for the Finance Minister to “throw up” figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Article IV report about growth because it did not include the impact of the dismantling of the Petrotrin refinery and was therefore wrong.

“The minister’s use of them therefore is a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the population into believing a projection which he himself knows is untrue.”

She cautioned Government was on a dangerous borrowing path that would take this country straight into the hands of the IMF, and in just three years this Government borrowed more than $20 billion. Debt to GDP has grown from 47.8 per cent in fiscal 2015 to 61 per cent in 2018.

“This country being run on borrowed money with no end in sight,” she said, and this “sea of red” would have to be paid back by future generations.

She also said while Imbert has criticised the previous administration for utilising the overdraft facility, the latest IMF report scolded this country for persistently maxing out its overdraft.

“I will call a spade a spade and a hypocrite a hypocrite.”

She also said: there was a crisis of confidence in the non-energy sector and not one new investment; foreign reserves had dropped from $10.5 billion to $7.6 billion and the Government was competing with the private sector for foreign exchange; the claim that the inflation rate was lowered was deceptive, as the consumer price index was rebased, and data from the Trade Ministry showed food prices were up by more than 21 per cent compared to 2015.

She also said the World Bank reported that after receiving Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows of over US$855 million in 2014 and 2015, the country suffered a significant net outflow of US$398 million in 2016 and 2017: “More money going out, none coming in.”

She slammed the Government on the collapse of the seabridge and said it caused more destruction ton the Tobago economy than a category five hurricane, and quipped that she looked forward to watching the “great race” between Public Services Association President Watson Duke and the Galleons Passage. (Duke claimed he would be able to outpace the Galleons Passage in a pirogue.)