Raphael John-Lall

Cari­com coun­tries should not ex­pect T&T to con­tribute the same amount of mon­ey it has con­tributed in pre­vi­ous years to the Pe­tro­le­um Cari­com Fund, said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai. "We did make con­tri­bu­tions to the Cari­com Pe­tro­le­um Fund, which was a fund es­tab­lished a few years ago and the pro­ceed­ings from that fund was used to as­sist our Cari­com neigh­bours in a num­ber of sce­nar­ios, but that de­pends crit­i­cal­ly on where the price of oil is and the kind of fis­cal sur­plus­es we would be in a po­si­tion to make.

"Be­cause of where prices would be in the up­com­ing year, it is prob­a­bly un­like­ly that we would be able to main­tain the lev­els of con­tri­bu­tions to the fund that we were able to make in the past. The amount that would be avail­able would be dif­fer­ent to what it used to be in years gone by. The ex­tent to which we could con­tribute would be dif­fer­ent," he said.

Howai was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the end of a two-day con­fer­ence host­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. For the first two years of the Cari­com Pe­tro­le­um Fund, es­tab­lished in 2004, T&T con­tributed $750 mil­lion.

When asked if T&T will con­tin­ue sub­si­dis­ing the econ­o­my on the lev­els it has done in the past, giv­en T&T's fu­el sub­sidy which now stands at $3.2 bil­lion, Howai said he has not been Fi­nance Min­is­ter long enough to de­ter­mine some­thing like that.

Howai as­sumed the port­fo­lio of Fi­nance Min­is­ter in June.

"We have to take a clos­er look at all our ex­pen­di­ture and be sure that we can jus­ti­fy that ex­pen­di­ture and all as­pects of it. I would say I have been in of­fice for two months and that is not enough time re­al­ly to get a full view and full con­sul­ta­tion and de­vel­op all the de­tails of spe­cif­ic pro­grammes go­ing for­ward. "We cer­tain­ly have to con­tin­ue that process of go­ing for­ward in the new fis­cal year. All the pro­grammes we cur­rent­ly have will have be re­viewed in the con­text of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion that ex­ists."

Howai is op­ti­mistic about the econ­o­my on the heels of Tues­day's con­clud­ed bid round for five deep­wa­ter blocks. Twelve bids were re­ceived. "There has been a lot of pos­i­tives com­ing out of the deep­wa­ter bid round. Know­ing the peo­ple of T&T like I do, peo­ple would start spend­ing mon­ey on the ba­sis of the deep­wa­ter bid round, which was suc­cess­ful," Howai said. "We are very op­ti­mistic about that and it is ex­pect­ed that what comes out of that, we will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on mak­ing lev­els of ex­pen­di­ture sus­tain­able."