Resh­ma Ra­goonath

De­spite pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic fore­casts T&T's econ­o­my re­mains stag­nant and that is not go­ing to change any time soon, econ­o­mist and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Dhanasyar Ma­habir has warned.In the fea­ture ad­dress at the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of Com­merce's Christ­mas din­ner at Can­ton Palace, San Fer­nan­do , Ma­habir re­called that in 2008 his pre­dic­tion of ten years of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion was shot down."Five years lat­er, we have seen a lev­el of stag­na­tion that we did not an­tic­i­pate and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty did no t ex­pect," he said.

Ma­habir said he would like to change his pre­dic­tion but has not seen any sig­nif­i­cant changes in the econ­o­my."In 2008 when I said we were go­ing to have ten years of eco­nom­ic de­cline I ex­pect­ed by 2012 for there to be some sig­nif­i­cant signs and I have not seen them, so re­gret­tably I have to say I do not know when this pe­ri­od of stag­na­tion will end," he said.

Ma­habir said if small medi­um or large busi­ness­es, re­view their sales fig­ures they would find rel­a­tive­ly flat sales, or down­ward de­cline with few ex­cep­tions. This would in­di­cate that con­trary to pro­jec­tions of eco­nom­ic growth, T&T's econ­o­my is not mov­ing from its cur­rent po­si­tion, he said.

"Every year you keep hear­ing the pro­jec­tions from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Cen­tral Bank and the much re­spect­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) that you are go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence pos­i­tive, sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tained eco­nom­ic growth," he said, adding that even whenr such pro­jec­tions are made by the IMF, "we hear that there were some dif­fi­cul­ties in wider economies and we were not able to re­alise the pro­ject­ed growth",

Ma­habir said at present T&T pro­duces al­most half the amount of oil it pro­duced a decade ago even though oil prices are at­trac­tive. Con­vers1ely, nat­ur­al gas prices are low and T&T has an abun­dance. He said while he did not want to be the bear­er of bad news, it is clear that "our en­er­gy sec­tor does not seem to be hold­ing out the kind of op­ti­mism that we ex­pect­ed from it"."We are not go­ing to have the en­er­gy sec­tor pulling us out as ex­pect­ed, those in the in­dus­try know that," he added.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­habir, there is not much gov­ern­ment can do in the present cir­cum­stances be­cause the source of the prob­lem must first be found."Fi­nal­ly af­ter 50 years this econ­o­my re­al­ly has to di­ver­si­fy. We can­not talk now. The di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion will have to come from the pri­vate sec­tor," he said.Ma­habir said T&T has to be­gin ex­port­ing its ex­per­tise in oil and gas and pen­e­trate mar­kets out­side of the re­gion. He said more em­pha­sis must be placed on do­ing busi­ness with Asia and Africa.

"Un­less we di­ver­si­fy in­ter­na­tion­al­ly I can­not give you a time line when we will be­gin to ex­pe­ri­ence sus­tain­ing eco­nom­ic growth in the econ­o­my. I know this is a bit de­press­ing, but we know there is a prob­lem and we can fix it," he said.Pe­nal/ Debe Cham­ber pres­i­dent Sahid Ho­sein, while the area "seems to be boom­ing, as a coun­try we are at a cross­road".

He said for im­proved busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and so­cial mo­bil­i­ty there must be good gov­er­nance, prop­er con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments, prop­er in­fra­struc­ture, prop­er pro­cure­ment and a pub­lic ser­vice that is prop­er­ly man­aged with a un­der­stand­ing of their role."The soon­er, the bet­ter," Ho­sein added.