Gail Alexan­der

The en­tire out­look for the world econ­o­my and T&T is very un­cer­tain fol­low­ing Tues­day's US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion vic­to­ry for Don­ald Trump, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment de­bate yes­ter­day, Im­bert said he had been up un­til 4 am watch­ing the "very un­ex­pect­ed de­vel­op­ments in the US."

He added: "When you take the im­pli­ca­tions of the re­cent Brex­it (Britain ex­it­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union) with what oc­curred in Amer­i­ca, the out­look for the world econ­o­my, (and) we in T&T, is un­cer­tain. The Dow (fi­nan­cial) in­dex has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly... 750 points. The whole sit­u­a­tion is un­cer­tain.

"As we go for­ward, we'll see what hap­pens but the fact of the mat­ter is we have to be very, very care­ful as a small open econ­o­my go­ing for­ward fac­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges, de­pressed com­mod­i­ty prices and de­cline in oil and gas pro­duc­tion."

Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie, who spoke af­ter Im­bert, con­grat­u­lat­ed the new US ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"I con­grat­u­late the new Pres­i­dent in his elec­tion by the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process to the seat of Pres­i­dent of that im­por­tant coun­try. I hope his term of of­fice will be con­struc­tive, fruit­ful and im­pact pos­i­tive­ly on the world sys­tem and the US."

Pri­or to Par­lia­ment, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter's Stu­art Young told re­porters the re­sults may im­pact T&T's is­sue with the US con­cern­ing com­pli­ance with the cru­cial For­eign Ac­count Tax­a­tion Agree­ment (FAT­CA).

That caused grave con­cern in Sep­tem­ber when pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion for the agree­ment failed in Par­lia­ment be­fore a dead­line. Im­bert sub­se­quent­ly ap­prised the US Trea­sury De­part­ment of T&T's progress in meet­ing FAT­CA oblig­a­tions and T&T is now con­sid­ered to have an agree­ment "in ef­fect."

How­ev­er, the US will be mon­i­tor­ing T&T's progress in­to 2017 and T&T must achieve full com­pli­ance by the next dead­line or risk US sanc­tions. US Am­bas­sador John Estra­da had urged Gov­ern­ment to pass the leg­is­la­tion, on the Par­lia­ment's agen­da as the next item for de­bate, no lat­er than Feb­ru­ary 2017.

Young said: "The new US pres­i­den­cy doesn't come in­to ef­fect un­til Jan­u­ary 2017. We're not ex­pect­ing any ef­fect on the dis­cus­sions we have had with the US Trea­sury. We'll con­tin­ue to press ahead with the FAT­CA de­bate short­ly af­ter to­day's mo­tion."

On pos­si­ble ef­fect on T&T from Trump's cam­paign plan to de­port un­doc­u­ment­ed peo­ple, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon said if peo­ple were de­port­ed, mea­sures would have to be tak­en to treat with them when they came to T&T.

Cur­rent­ly, Gov­ern­ment re­ceives ad­vanced pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion–records and ar­rival time–on all US de­por­tees to T&T and would seek to con­tin­ue that arrange­ment.

But he said he had no rea­son to ex­pect an in­crease in de­por­tees. "We'll have to wait and see what poli­cies are enun­ci­at­ed by the new US Gov­ern­ment, not on­ly con­cern­ing T&T but al­so the wider Caribbean," he added.

"His­tor­i­cal­ly, we have had that kind of re­la­tion­ship with the US and from where I stand, I don't see any rea­son why it should be cur­tailed.

"We just have to wait and see what the new gov­ern­ment's poli­cies are. But based on the T&T-US re­la­tion­ship over the years, I firm­ly be­lieve there won't be any dras­tic changes," he added.