The state of the econ­o­my is not a sur­prise to econ­o­mists and oth­er fi­nan­cial ex­perts around the coun­try.

How­ev­er, they al­so say the new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s plans to ad­dress grow­ing deficits and in­crease rev­enues must go be­yond dip­ping in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­sa­tion Fund (HSF) in the short term.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the coun­try has a $4.42 bil­lion deficit for May and a pro­ject­ed $11 bil­lion deficit for this fis­cal year. She blamed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the sit­u­a­tion, say­ing her min­is­ters, on en­ter­ing their min­istries this week, found that the bud­gets for this fis­cal year had al­ready been spent.