Beckles: T&T in recession; gives Tancoo’s Budget an ‘F’ grade

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­ces­sion!

That’s what Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says Trinidad and To­ba­go is in dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s tenure.

Beck­les warned of “more to come” on neg­a­tives aris­ing from the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s 2027 Bud­get.

De­liv­er­ing her Bud­get re­ply in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les used the words of late Ca­lyp­so King Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co to slam the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“In the words of the leg­endary Mighty Spar­row, the UNC are ‘ar­chi­tects of eco­nom­ic slav­ery.’”

She quot­ed Spar­row’s lines: “‘And in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent ways they vi­o­late the law. It’s the same good, no-good bas­tards who op­press the poor, with their false de­c­la­ra­tion, tax eva­sion, de­fraud­ing cus­toms du­ty. These good cit­i­zens are the ar­chi­tects of eco­nom­ic slav­ery.’”

Beck­les al­so paid trib­ute to Spar­row, say­ing: “We say farewell to a gi­ant of a man, a re­gion­al­ist, a na­tion­al­ist, a hero, and a ca­lyp­son­ian, I dare say one of the great­est of all time.”

Turn­ing her at­ten­tion to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s 2027 Bud­get, Beck­les de­scribed it as “de­ceit­ful, de­cep­tive and de­struc­tive ... mal­ice and ma­mamguy ... un­der­whelm­ing. A Bud­get skimpy on sub­stance, cov­er­ing very lit­tle of the im­por­tant things—a ‘biki­ni’ Bud­get.”

Beck­les added, “It’s as emp­ty like the UNC Tu­na­puna MP’s bag of hot air—I give it an F grade. Con­trary to the Prime Min­is­ter’s delu­sion­al state­ment that this was an ‘awe­some’ Bud­get, this was in fact an aw­ful Bud­get.”

She lat­er down­grad­ed the F to a U, say­ing the bud­get was, in fact, ungrad­able.

Beck­les said the Bud­get was pre­sent­ed against a back­drop of se­vere­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go and ex­treme hard­ship for or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

She ac­cused Tan­coo of fail­ing to present the true state of the econ­o­my be­cause the news was bad. Beck­les said Tan­coo’s on­ly in­for­ma­tion on eco­nom­ic per­for­mance was a 1.8 per cent de­cline in re­al GDP in the first quar­ter of 2026.

“He failed to state that Cen­tral Bank da­ta shows that the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, the fourth quar­ter of 2025, al­so ex­pe­ri­enced a de­cline of 0.9 per cent. That marks two con­sec­u­tive quar­ters of eco­nom­ic de­cline go­ing in­to 2026.”

Beck­les not­ed the IMF stat­ed in April 2025 un­der the PNM that re­al GDP growth was fore­cast at 2.4 per cent for 2025 and 1.1 per cent for 2026.

“Ac­cord­ing to the 2026 Re­view of the Econ­o­my, let me tell you what the min­is­ter is afraid to say. Ac­tu­al growth achieved in 2025: the econ­o­my de­clined by 0.5 per cent. And the same Re­view of the Econ­o­my—pre­pared by his Min­istry—now fore­casts re­al GDP growth for 2026 to be neg­a­tive 2.2 per cent, con­tract­ing for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year! “

She added, “With two con­sec­u­tive quar­ters of neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic growth and two con­sec­u­tive years of ac­cel­er­at­ing con­trac­tion in re­al GDP, I take no plea­sure in say­ing what the Min­is­ter’s afraid to, what the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor may not want to ad­mit, and what many econ­o­mists are see­ing: this coun­try is now in a re­ces­sion—caused by the UNC Gov­ern­ment and its failed poli­cies, which are an­ti-peo­ple, an­ti-busi­ness, and an­ti-in­vest­ment.”

Beck­les al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of seek­ing to “steal” the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions with the re­cent Bill adding new bor­oughs and “in­flict ger­ry­man­der­ing on half the coun­try” via bud­get cuts to PNM cor­po­ra­tions’ de­vel­op­ment fund­ing.

She said the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent state­ments on the fund­ing PNM cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived sought to de­flect from the “prej­u­dice” per­pe­trat­ed on PNM cor­po­ra­tions.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to cause con­fu­sion and dis­tract from her Gov­ern­ment’s gut­ting of the de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for PNM cor­po­ra­tions by quot­ing re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture fig­ures ... seek­ing to de­ceive the pop­u­la­tion—play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness! The UNC is de­lib­er­ate­ly sab­o­tag­ing PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions, and the Prime Min­is­ter is well aware of this.”

LOW GRADE FOR AW­FUL BUD­GET

Best char­ac­terised by what it failed to say rather than by what it said.

• An­ti-peo­ple, an­ti-de­vel­op­ment, au­thor­i­tar­i­an, an­ti-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic.

• Emp­ty on new projects/pro­grammes, in­clud­ing for util­i­ties, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, youth fo­cus, jobs, eco­nom­ic plan, re­duc­ing cost of liv­ing or food prices.

• No re­al com­mu­ni­ty in­vest­ment to ex­cite the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty or at­tract do­mes­tic/for­eign in­vestors; fur­ther crash­ing the econ­o­my.

• En­er­gy sec­tor dec­i­ma­tion, drug short­ages.

• Failed promis­es—ed­u­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture, hous­ing and oth­er sec­tors.

• Changes to with­hold­ing tax and tax loss­es car­ried for­ward will chase away in­vestors/ not in­vestor-friend­ly bud­get.

• To­ba­go shaft­ed.

• Lit­tle/no re­port­ing on the out turn from the pre­vi­ous year, or on per­for­mance of projects in 2026 Bud­get doc­u­ments.

• Failed to iden­ti­fy prob­lems Trinidad and To­ba­go faces and present so­lu­tions.

• Dull, in­sipid, unin­spir­ing, like the gov­ern­ment.