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For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul has pushed back against claims by his suc­ces­sor, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, that a new­ly se­cured US$1 bil­lion loan sig­nals strong in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on the side­lines of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s 70th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, Dhan­paul ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion of sad­dling the coun­try with long-term debt at an ex­ces­sive cost.

“A lot of peo­ple think that 6.5 per cent coupon rate is ex­ceed­ing­ly high. I’ll give you an ex­am­ple: the last time we went out to the mar­ket in 2016, the coupon was 4.5 per cent and it was three times over­sub­scribed. Be­fore that, in 2013 un­der Min­is­ter Howai, the coupon was sim­i­lar, around 4.54 per cent, and it was 11 times over­sub­scribed,” he said.