Shas­tri Boodan

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon says the Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing an ag­gres­sive de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

She made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Greater Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try Com­merce post-bud­get dis­cus­sion on Wednes­day at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas.

The min­is­ter said the econ­o­my has re-cal­i­brat­ed.

She said the Gov­ern­ment has pru­dent­ly man­aged the econ­o­my not­ing that Gov­ern­ment rev­enues de­clined to $36 bil­lion in 2017 with a cur­tail­ment of Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture from $62.5 bil­lion in 2014 to $50.5 bil­lion in 2019.

She said de­spite this the Gov­ern­ment has still man­aged to main­tain and en­hance the so­cial safe­ty net through pru­dent fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion.

She said the net would strength­ened in 2020 with the in­crease of the min­i­mum wage to $17.50 per hour, and in­crease to the OJT stipend and in­crease of CEPEP salary.

Say­ing that eco­nom­ic growth has re­turned, she said for the pe­ri­od 2020- 2021 growth is ex­pect­ed at the rates of 1.9 per cent, 4.1 per cent and 3.1 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

She said the re­turn to growth, though small, is en­cour­ag­ing when com­pared to the glob­al sce­nario for the cur­rent fis­cal pe­ri­od of 2.6 per cent.

She said the growth fore­cast for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean has been down­grad­ed to 0.6 per cent in 2019.

Gopee-Scoon said in­fla­tion fell from 1.9 per cent in 2017 to 0.9 per cent in 2018 and re­turned to 1.2 per cent in Sep­tem­ber 2019.

She said the glob­al com­pet­i­tive re­port gives T&T the num­ber one po­si­tion in the world , along­side oth­er coun­tries, with the low­est rate of in­fla­tion.

She said in terms of macro-eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty T&T is ranked 58 out of 141 coun­tries.

The min­is­ter said T&T has one of the low­est rate of un­em­ploy­ment in the re­gion falling in the range of three to five per cent.

She said the debt to GDP is at 62 per cent.

She said the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion fund is at $6.25 bil­lion in 2019 up by US$600 mil­lion from 2015.

Gopee-Scoon said T&T’s to­tal for­eign re­serve po­si­tion stands at US $13 bil­lion as of Sep­tem­ber 2019.

The min­is­ter said pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor has in­crease by 6.3 per cent in 2018 and up by 7 per cent in the first quar­ter for 2019.

She said en­er­gy rev­enues are ex­pect­ed to in­crease from $16.23 bil­lion in 2020 to $$19.53 bil­lion due to in­creased prices and pro­duc­tion lev­els.

She said the non-en­er­gy sec­tor ex­port­ed $4.78 bil­lion in goods be­tween Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 2018 and $5.21 bil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2019.

She said prod­ucts see­ing a sub­stan­tial in­crease in ex­port de­mand in­clud­ed toi­let pa­per, ce­re­als, choco­late and plas­tic bot­tles.

She said ex­ports in­creased to the US, Cari­com and bi-lat­er­al part­ners.

Cit­ing ex­am­ples, she said ex­ports to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic had in­creased by 20 per­cent, 103 per cent to Pana­ma and 143 per cent to Cu­ba.