Raphael John-Lall

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran is stick­ing to his fore­cast of 2.5 per cent growth for T&T this year, al­though he said there are risks that could change that out­look.

"That was the same fore­cast we had at the Oc­to­ber re­lease of the Mon­e­tary Re­port. We have main­tained that fore­cast be­cause what we have seen is that re­cent da­ta on the en­er­gy sec­tor sug­gests there is a re­bound in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and the lead­ing eco­nom­ic da­ta with re­spect to the non en­er­gy sec­tor sug­gests some re­vival in non en­er­gy out­put," he said when the Cen­tral Bank's lat­est Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port was re­leased yes­ter­day.

Ram­bar­ran said the pro­ject­ed growth rate is not an au­to­mat­ic fig­ure and cau­tioned against get­ting "hung up over the 2.5 per cent fig­ure"."What is im­por­tant to see is that the non en­er­gy sec­tor has per­formed well over the last six quar­ters and we will see a sim­i­lar per­for­mance in the first quar­ter of this year to make it sev­en quar­ters of con­sec­u­tive growth. We seem to be turn­ing the cor­ner," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­bar­ran, there are risks that could threat­en the growth fore­cast, so the Cen­tral Bank will have to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments in the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­my and is pre­pared to take what­ev­er ac­tion is nec­es­sary.Ram­bar­ran said one risk has to do with plans by en­er­gy com­pa­nies BPTT and BGTT to shut down lat­er this year for se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance work, par­tic­u­lar­ly if that takes longer than an­tic­i­pat­ed.

"If that shut­down ma­te­ri­alis­es, it will have an ex­treme im­pact on the growth process and on the growth re­cov­ery which is un­der­way. We know that the Min­istry of En­er­gy is work­ing with both com­pa­nies to try to co-or­di­nate that."Ram­bar­ran said in­dus­tri­al ac­tion in 2013 could see a re­peat of prob­lems ex­pe­ri­enced last year.

"It is not that we are iden­ti­fy­ing any par­tic­u­lar sec­tor, whether it is the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor. What we are say­ing is that any ex­tend­ed in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ac­tion that is sim­i­lar in size and mag­ni­tude to what took place at Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) will sure­ly hit the econ­o­my in a very bad way, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when we are see­ing that re­cov­ery is start­ing to grad­u­al­ly take hold," he said.

The Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor al­so iden­ti­fied risks in the glob­al econ­o­my that could po­ten­tial­ly im­pact on T&T: "The first one is ei­ther we see a re-emer­gence of fi­nan­cial ten­sions in the Eu­ro­zone and we have seen this in terms of Cyprus. Al­so, if no con­sen­sus is reached in terms of solv­ing the US fis­cal sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly de­ci­sions on spend­ing cuts."