00:00Former Finance Minister Karen Nunes Teixeira says the scale of discrepancies is significant.
00:07She points out that in a previous report under the former administration,
00:11the issue involved $2.6 billion and was described as a disclaimer,
00:17while this latest finding covers $36.56 billion in unverified tax revenue
00:23and is described as a qualified opinion.
00:26She warns that the findings could negatively affect the country's international reputation.
00:33What you are saying is that the revenue and the expenditure financial information
00:41that was submitted to you as the Auditor General under the 2025 fiscal year,
00:47that you were satisfied that they stood up to integrity, they were reliable, they were credible,
00:52and therefore you gave it a qualified opinion.
00:55What are you saying to the people of this country?
00:57What are you saying to the investors in this country?
01:00And what are you saying to the foreign investors also?
01:03Yet when it was the other government, you said it was a disclaim,
01:08which means that you are washing your hands.
01:10Nunes Teixeira is also calling for further investigation into specific allocations,
01:16including funding under the Infrastructure Development Fund,
01:20which, she says, was intended for designated projects with the HDC,
01:24but appears to have been spent otherwise.
01:27I suppose my concern is, and she has rightly highlighted,
01:32that obviously money was spent and authorized and checks provided for HDC work,
01:39but not for the purpose for which the Appropriation Act had appropriated that funding.
01:44She further tells the Morning Edition that the broader issue of fiscal credibility
01:50is now under scrutiny, as the country continues to face pressure
01:54over public revenue collections and financial reporting standards.
01:58When you look at Standard & Poor's and Moody's, which give their rating of the International Rating Agency
02:06and the Central Bank, it seems to me that one of the greatest concerns
02:10coming from the various chambers of commerce in Trinidad,
02:14and also data provided by all those entities,
02:18is that one of the major areas of concern is the amount of the taxes
02:23that were imposed in this country as a means of collected revenue,
02:27as well as the public debt.
02:29Nicole M. Romany, TV6 News.
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