COLM AGAIN?!

ONLY in a collapsing state could the author of our crisis flaunt another term in elected office.

Colm Imbert dancing his way to the PNM Screening Committee is an affront to the country he wrecked with a stream of failed economic policies.

Nine deficit budgets (there was a surplus in the tenth due to commodity price increases amid the Covid-19 epidemic) is only an outline of his disastrous report card.

Imbert, a civil engineer, has overseen a 20 per cent economic decline during his torturous term as Finance Minister.

To me, the most wretched aspect of his tenure is presiding over the largest gap between rich and poor in Trinidad and Tobago’s history.

Increases in food, fuel and other essentials and a virtual wage freeze have caused a widening underclass, while large corporations report billion-dollar profits.

There is an oligarch even as the poor struggle to put food on the table.

A monopoly multinational cement manufacturer that made $415 million pre-tax profit in its most recent nine months increased retail prices five times in 38 months.

The Finance Ministry had previously driven local industry player Rock Hard out of business by a punitive 900 per cent increase in duties and raw material quota limitations.

The Fair Trading Commission sat back as Rock Hard closed operations, throwing 70 workers on the breadline and denying consumers an alternative product.

The Commission previously permitted monopolies in pharmaceutical imports and other vital sectors.

The discriminatory distribution of scarce foreign exchange has led to thousands of small business closures and a pervasive TT $8-to-US$1 black market.

The growth of the annual food import bill from $4 billion to $7.3 billion in less than a decade is the result of generous benefits to a politically-friendly big business cartel and the destruction of agricultural production.

Economic diversification remains only a buzzword.

Commercial banks are rolling in billion-dollar profits while oppressed clients struggle to pay mortgages or meet payroll.

Manufacturers continue to clamour for tax incentives for machinery and production lines to boost production.

And so on…

And the author of T&T’s economic mess is soca dancing his way for another five-year stint as an elected parliamentarian and possible national office-holder.

What did we do to deserve this?