Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has sig­nalled that Gov­ern­ment will not ac­cept any rec­om­men­da­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) that un­der­mines its de­vel­op­ment agen­da for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Tan­coo con­firmed that he met IMF rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week as part of the Fund’s Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion, a rou­tine as­sess­ment that al­lows IMF econ­o­mists to ex­am­ine a coun­try’s fi­nances, meet with of­fi­cials and eval­u­ate the sta­bil­i­ty of in­fla­tion, debt and eco­nom­ic growth. In the Caribbean, such re­views of­ten in­flu­ence cred­it rat­ings and in­vestor con­fi­dence.

Tan­coo ac­knowl­edged that IMF con­sul­ta­tions typ­i­cal­ly pro­duce rec­om­men­da­tions such as re­duc­ing trans­fers, sub­si­dies and de­valu­ing na­tion­al cur­ren­cies. In some cas­es, it can al­so in­clude re­struc­tur­ing state-owned en­ter­pris­es and even in­creas­ing the re­tire­ment age. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said those pre­scrip­tions do not al­ways align with the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties.