Can T&T afford Kamla’s promises?

The com­men­tary be­low was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on April 3, 2025, and is be­ing re­pub­lished to­day as a re­sult the re­ac­tions to last week's col­umn in this space, head­lined 'Will trade unions turn against Govt?'

The cost of fund­ing sev­en of the main promis­es/com­mit­ments made by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), dur­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign could be more than $18 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture or rev­enue fore­gone, ac­cord­ing to Busi­ness Guardian cal­cu­la­tions, based on pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion and ver­i­fied by se­nior econ­o­mists, who in­sist­ed on anonymi­ty be­cause of their sen­si­tive po­si­tions.

The sev­en main fi­nan­cial promis­es/com­mit­ments are: