Tancoo: Government's figures wrong on back pay to retired public servants

OROPOUCHE West MP Davendranath Tancoo accused Finance Minister Colm Imbert of being unable to properly do math calculations as he challenged him on the $4,000 one-off sum to be paid to individuals retiring from the public sector in 2014-2016.

Tancoo was leading the Opposition's reply to the Finance Bill 2023 in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

He recalled Imbert in his budget speech having estimated the cost of the lump sum payment at $19.7 million. Tancoo said the day's bill aimed to effect the budget promise and he had just done mathematical calculations relative to Imbert's promises.

"We have now got to the point where I think as a Christmas gesture, I will be providing the Honourable Minister of Finance with a calculator, because clearly his maths does not maths."

Tancoo said the minister said 1,700 people would each get the $4,000 lump sum. He said Imbert had previously put the cost at $19.7 million.

"Madam Speaker, when I went to school my maths teacher, Mr Basdeo, insisted that we not use calculators because we will lose the ability to do maths.

"Clearly the minister has lost the ability to do maths.

"But it seems worse. IT seems he has also lost the ability to use a calculator."

Amid murmuring on the government benches, he chided them for trivialising the loss of millions of dollars.

"They could trivialise the failure to account as much as they want. The problem remains, the maths not mathsing.

"Four thousand dollars by 1,700 works out to $6.8 million. You know how much the Government approved for this action? Nineteen million dollars!

"So where the money gone?"

"We are missing substantial money. I hope the minister, in his wind-up, could explain."

Tancoo considered retirees who had since died and asked if the $4,000 would be paid to their dependants.

He then questioned Imbert's tax incentives to corporations, including help for exports by local manufacturers.

"However businesses in this country have been complaining bitterly about other factors, which the minister has not touched and which the Government has treated shabbily.

"We have situations with the ease of doing business. Businesses have been complaining about problems accessing foreign exchange.

"Crime is now a factor of product in Trinidad and Tobago. Those factors greatly overshadow any thought of this benefit, because until businesses feel a little more comfortable investing in an environment where they could generate revenue and receive revenue,where they could have access to foreign exchange to buy foods and services, until that could happen we are spinning top in mud."

Tancoo scoffed at Imbert's claim of a whole-of-government approach to businesses but said recently chambers of commerce had been complaining of low foreign exchange and high crime.

"Simply taking export sales and giving a bligh with business levy is not sufficient.

"What is required is substantially more: A true situation where the Government looks at the big problem and treats with it, each item by item by item.

"Unfortunately that is not something that can be resolved by a signature from a pen."

On the property tax, he accused the Government of having created an illusion and a false narrative that corporations would be getting an increase in funds.

He concluded, "This is not a simple piece of legislation. Virtually every act they are taking here has questions to answer."