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It is im­pos­si­ble to as­sess the per­for­mance of Colm Im­bert as this na­tion’s longest con­tin­u­ous­ly serv­ing min­is­ter of fi­nance with­out look­ing at the econ­o­my he in­her­it­ed when he was ap­point­ed by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

In the two fi­nan­cial years be­fore Mr Im­bert be­came T&T’s min­is­ter of fi­nance, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship col­lect­ed $47.97 bil­lion in cur­rent en­er­gy rev­enues—$28.05 bil­lion from Oc­to­ber 1, 2023 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2014 and $19.50 bil­lion be­tween Oc­to­ber 1 2014 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2019 Re­view of the Econ­o­my, in the first two years of Mr Im­bert’s stew­ard­ship—which would have been from Oc­to­ber 1, 2015 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2017—the Gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed $15.63 bil­lion in cur­rent en­er­gy rev­enues. That means the rev­enues from the en­er­gy sec­tor, then and now the main dri­ver of the do­mes­tic econ­o­my, de­clined by 67.41 per cent in Mr Im­bert’s first two years.