Imbert: Moody’s upgrade not due to Govt performance

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of dis­hon­est­ly tak­ing cred­it for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s im­proved Moody’s out­look from a neg­a­tive to sta­ble sta­tus, ar­gu­ing that the in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency’s de­ci­sion was dri­ven by high­er oil and gas prices linked to con­flict in the Mid­dle East, rather than Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the econ­o­my.

Con­tribut­ing to the de­bate im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s Mid-Year Re­view in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Im­bert re­butted claims that there was an im­prove­ment thanks to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

He said T&T al­ready held a sta­ble out­look be­fore it was re­vised to neg­a­tive in De­cem­ber 2025, ar­gu­ing that the lat­est ad­just­ment re­turned the coun­try to its ear­li­er po­si­tion.

“What the min­is­ter did not say is that when the UNC came in­to of­fice, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s out­look was al­ready sta­ble, and they sent it neg­a­tive.

“In De­cem­ber 2025, Moody’s re­duced and re­vised T&T’s out­look from sta­ble to neg­a­tive. So, all that has hap­pened is that we are back in the same place that we were in May of 2025. And why are we back in the same place? The min­is­ter said that the el­e­va­tion, I don’t un­der­stand what that means, be­cause he sent us neg­a­tive, we now come back sta­ble, is due to the great fis­cal and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment of the UNC Gov­ern­ment. That is sim­ply not true.”

He said the in­crease in en­er­gy prices was sole­ly linked to the war in Iran.

Im­bert al­so ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of un­der­stat­ing the State’s fi­nances, say­ing it had de­lib­er­ate­ly pro­ject­ed a false deficit that would lat­er re­quire bil­lions in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing.

“What’s ab­nor­mal is that a Gov­ern­ment cooks the books, projects a false deficit, know­ing ful­ly well that they have to come back lat­er in the year and sup­ple­ment the ap­pro­pri­a­tion by bil­lions of dol­lars. That is ab­nor­mal, and the min­is­ter is now con­fess­ing that the deficit this year will be at least $7 bil­lion. I sus­pect it will be more.”

Im­bert al­so re­ject­ed Tan­coo’s claims that the econ­o­my is show­ing re­silience, ref­er­enc­ing da­ta from the Cen­tral Bank he said in­di­cates a weak­en­ing non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

He said over the last year, sev­er­al key in­di­ca­tors have de­clined, in­clud­ing ce­ment sales, sig­nalling a slow­down in con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty.

Im­bert al­so point­ed to a con­trac­tion in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor of as much as ten per cent, and warned that oth­er in­di­ca­tors, in­clud­ing cred­it growth and the lo­cal stock mar­ket, were al­so de­clin­ing.

“When you go and check the Cen­tral Bank re­ports, when you go and check the re­view of the econ­o­my pub­lished in 2025, we are see­ing this ... that the in­dex of re­tail sales fell year on year in fis­cal 2025, a third straight neg­a­tive quar­ter.

“Ce­ment sales dropped to 92,000 tonnes by the end of 2025, the weak­est in the se­ries, con­firm­ing the con­struc­tion slow­down ... Re­tail sales are down. Ce­ment sales are down. Con­struc­tion has slowed down. And what you are see­ing is a con­trac­tion in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor. You have a sit­u­a­tion where the non-en­er­gy sec­tor is con­tract­ing by as much as 10 per cent. So, all this set of old talk, if that war did not oc­cur in Iran, what will be the Gov­ern­ment telling us to­day?”

He added, “The worst-per­form­ing sec­tor of our econ­o­my, which was the best-per­form­ing sec­tor of our econ­o­my un­der the PNM, is the non-en­er­gy sec­tor. Cred­it and mon­ey are de­cel­er­at­ing. Pri­vate sec­tor growth is slow­ing. It’s slowed from eight per cent to five per cent. The lo­cal eq­ui­ty mar­ket, which is an in­di­ca­tion of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my, the Stock Ex­change, has dropped 12.5 per cent in to­tal val­ue year on year un­der them.

“Look at bank shares, look at shares of con­glom­er­ates, look at shares of man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies. They have all col­lapsed un­der this Gov­ern­ment over the last 12 months.”

Im­bert al­so not­ed a de­cline in for­eign ex­change re­serves, which he said had fall­en to the low­est lev­el in more than 15 years at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$4.7 bil­lion.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing a tem­po­rary boost from re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al bor­row­ing, he warned that up­com­ing debt oblig­a­tions would place fur­ther pres­sure on re­serve lev­els.

Fur­ther crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s $2.9 bil­lion sup­ple­men­tary ap­pro­pri­a­tion, Im­bert said the ma­jor­i­ty of the fund­ing was al­lo­cat­ed to trans­fers, sub­si­dies and statu­to­ry bod­ies, with on­ly a lim­it­ed por­tion di­rect­ed to­wards de­vel­op­ment spend­ing.

Im­bert al­so ques­tioned why the Gov­ern­ment has not yet op­er­a­tionalised its $475 mil­lion em­ploy­ment fund, say­ing the de­lay means a key promise to sup­port work­ers has not been de­liv­ered.

He added that the Gov­ern­ment had noth­ing in place to help stim­u­late small busi­ness­es.

He said the war will soon come to an end, and he ques­tioned what will hap­pen when the price of oil re­turns to what it was.

He said the sup­ple­men­ta­tion will do noth­ing to help T&T.