FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert is refuting all claims made by the Opposition regarding the utilisation of withdrawals from the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund (HSF) last year.
In a statement by the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday, Imbert described the claims as “utter nonsense.”
The Opposition has claimed that the money withdrawn from the fund was used to pay contractors and suppliers of goods and services in 2020, rather than for Covid-19 relief and vaccines.
Imbert stated, “This claim is utter nonsense and needs to be corrected and debunked. The Heritage and Stabilization Fund Act, 2007 states clearly at Section 3 that the one of the main purposes of the Fund is to save and invest surplus petroleum revenues derived from production business in order to cushion the impact on or sustain public expenditure capacity during periods of revenue downturn.
“In 2020, the Act was amended to allow withdrawals where a dangerous infectious disease was declared under the Public Health Ordinance, as is the case today with the Covid-19 pandemic, again in the context of a shortfall in revenue. The Act also states in Section 15 that withdrawals from the Fund must be deposited into the Consolidated Fund. It is well known that once revenue is deposited into the Consolidated Fund it must be used to provide for the overall service of Trinidad and Tobago in any given fiscal year.”
Given that explanation, Imbert said the Opposition’s claims were nonsensical since withdrawals from the fund can be used for expenditure items specified in the Annual Estimates of Expenditure and in the Appropriation Act.
The minister stated that in 2020, the withdrawals from the HSF were used to provide funding for Covid-19 relief, social welfare, such as senior citizens’ pensions, and for salaries and wages, payments to contractors and suppliers of goods and services, and for personal protection equipment (PPE), health care, medical equipment, hospital construction, subsidies and transfers and all of the other items of expenditure approved by Parliament.
The same applied in 2021, as the pandemic continues to have a severe adverse effect of Government revenues, Imbert said.
