With the mid-year budget review due in a couple weeks, at least one economist is skeptical as to how the new government will balance the books. Mariano Browne tells TV6 he expects the already burgeoning deficit to further balloon. Rynessa Cutting has more.
00:00The mid-year budget review is expected in about one month's time.
00:05And while there are many unknowns in that equation, economist Mariano Brown says one thing remains certain, a burgeoning deficit.
00:14I think I saw this morning some central bank numbers suggesting that the deficit for the first half of the year was $9 billion.
00:24If what my eyes saw this morning were correct, this is a tough call. It starts off by being a tough call.
00:34Making a decision to spend more money and or to eliminate revenue makes it a tougher call.
00:41The UNC government has promised to increase public sector wages by at least 10%, repeal the Revenue Authority Act, and restart the Petrachian Refinery, among other objectives.
00:54We could expect that deficit to balloon, you would say.
00:58Well, yes. And that has implications for Trinidad in the biggest borrowing position.
01:04I think we are already over 70%, not included government-guaranteed debt.
01:11However, the government has vowed to make money and to find money by all means.
01:17One such plan is to pursue energy deals with Guyana.
01:20However, while the potential may be there, Brown points out that one major challenge remains.
01:26The difficulty is not the pipeline. The difficulty is that the pipeline passes through Venezuela waters.
01:34So it's not going to escape OFAC. And we already know what the position is with that.
01:42So if they're running a pipeline between Guyana and Trinidad, the first difficulty is how does it get past Venezuela waters?
01:51As for the plans to get gas from Grenada?
01:55The Grenada government-wise, it may have control of those fields, is in no better position in terms of determining when those fields are going to be explored.
02:05And then Trinidad and Tobago, with its own seven fields, which have not yet been, there's no final decisions on those fields.
02:13So you could have any amount of conversations that you want. The point is, until somebody decides to spend the money, there's no prospect of revenue.
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