Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has dis­missed what he de­scribed as fear-mon­ger­ing over the lat­est rat­ings ac­tion from Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P), say­ing that spread­ing alarm has long been a pas­time of PNM pup­pets and pup­peteers.

On Thurs­day, glob­al rat­ing agency Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P) re­vised the coun­try’s out­look from sta­ble to neg­a­tive, while af­firm­ing its rat­ings on T&T at ‘BBB-/A-3’ long- and short-term for­eign and lo­cal cur­ren­cy sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ings.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said too many cit­i­zens have been con­di­tioned to ex­pect the worst, when a more bal­anced and ob­jec­tive as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion shows that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to hold firm in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty.