Raphael John-Lall

The Cen­tral Bank was able to suc­cess­ful­ly keep the re­po rate at an "his­tor­i­cal low" to stim­u­late the econ­o­my, says Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran. "We would like to see a bud­get that re­flect a move to con­sol­i­da­tion over the medi­um term. What­ev­er those par­tic­u­lar mea­sures that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter is con­tem­plat­ing, we sim­ply await for when the bud­get takes place to see what those are. "For the mo­ment, I would say we at the bank did what we con­sid­er was the right course of di­rec­tion in terms of keep­ing the re­po rate at a his­tor­i­cal low so that it could help stim­u­late growth. "I think the Gov­ern­ment has the right view in terms of us­ing the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture pro­gramme to help jump­start the econ­o­my, but there are is­sues in terms of im­ple­men­ta­tion and that is some­thing they need to look at in terms of strength­en­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion side," Ram­bar­ran said.

Ram­bar­ran spoke to the me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter the Char­tered Fi­nan­cial An­a­lyst (CFA) So­ci­ety of T&T host­ed a break­fast meet­ing on the sub­ject of fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty in T&T?at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. "As I said be­fore, the econ­o­my has been fair­ly re­silient against this tur­bu­lent, glob­al en­vi­ron­ment that we have faced over the last five years. I think we have seen some very en­cour­ag­ing signs of growth in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor and what we look for­ward to is a bud­get that will set the prop­er tone and di­rec­tion for the next year in terms of the key chal­lenges that we face now, in terms of re­viv­ing growth in the econ­o­my and mak­ing it sus­tain­able over the next few years," Ram­bar­ran said. The longer-term goal, he said, is to re­duce the size of the fis­cal deficits.

"What we need to do is look at how we can tran­si­tion to small­er fis­cal deficits and even­tu­al­ly reach­ing a bal­anced po­si­tion and then pos­si­bly build­ing up sur­plus­es. From that par­tic­u­lar tar­get then, we look and de­ter­mine what makes a rev­enue and what makes an ex­pen­di­ture. The right com­bi­na­tion to bring us to those tar­get­ed po­si­tions and I will not want to get in­to the spe­cif­ic of rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture as that is an area for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance," he said. Ram­bar­ran told the me­dia that the de­ci­sions of the Cen­tral?Bank are not po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­enced. "The man­date of the Cen­tral Bank has al­ways been and out­side of the elec­toral cy­cle. The Cen­tral Bank is an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion and, there­fore, the views and de­ci­sions that the bank will take must be in the in­ter­est of the coun­try," Ram­bar­ran said.