Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira’s 2009/2010 Budget presentation was described yesterday as underhanded and lacking ideas.

The criticism came from economist Indera Sagewan-Alli, during a post-Budget forum hosted by the Co-operative Credit Union League of Trinidad and Tobago and the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU), held at the union’s Paramount Building, San Fernando headquarters.

The panellists included president of the Chaguanas Chamber of Commerce, Stephen Cadiz; president of the Cattle Farmers Association; Chris Medford; anti-smelter activist Dr Wayne Kublalsingh and Credit Union League representative Dr Winford James.

Sagewan-Alli said, ’Faced with economic slowdown after a run of good times once again, many of hoped that good sense would finally prevail and that this budget would make the start of a new thinking towards sustainable economic transformation.’

Instead, she said, it proved to be ’bereft of ideas and underhanded in presentation’.

Sagewan-Alli said, ’From one year to another, the opening budget statement should outline the previous year’s achievement, give reasons where targets are not realised, boast where they exceeded expectations and present the budgeted plans for the coming year against outcome indicators.’

But in articulating its intent for 2010, Sagewan-Alli said, Government sent a message of spending as usual ’and if oil and gas cannot pay for it, they will borrow or demand it from an already strained people’.

Sagewan-Alli said Nunez-Tesheira should have spent more time accounting for the $46.4 billion spent in fiscal 2009 and how Government intended to spend the budgeted $44.3 in fiscal 2010 ’and in particular how she intends to finance, spend and repay the $7.7 billion deficit’.

She said, ’the real question is will we the people whose money it is that is being spent allow Government to hide behind a few positive factors that can be wiped out in a matter of months?’

Sageewan-Alli also questioned Government’s price assumptions for oil and gas.

’While the oil price as US $55 per barrel is reasonable given the current projected trends, the price of gas at US $2.75 per mmbtu could prove the Achilles heel of the revenue base,’ she said.