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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Bharath at pre-budget seminar: Social fall-out if subsidies reduced

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20140625

Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath yes­ter­day said that re­duc­ing trans­fers and sub­si­dies, which take up about 50 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get, is not as easy as some peo­ple think be­cause there will al­ways be a so­cial fall out."There are al­ways is­sues of eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics. I would like to hear views on the man­ner and time frame on which we re­duce those trans­fers and sub­si­dies and man­age the so­cial im­pli­ca­tions. It is very easy to say cut the trans­fers but the oth­er side of it is how we man­age the so­cial im­pli­ca­tions," he said.

Bharath, the keynote speak­er yes­ter­day at a pre-bud­get sem­i­nar host­ed by the T&T Group of Pro­fes­sion­al As­so­ci­a­tions at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, said the prob­lem is that many peo­ple in T&T do not want to work."The pri­vate sec­tor will tell you that there are gov­ern­ment pro­grammes that have crowd­ed out the pri­vate sec­tor in many in­stances but we have cre­at­ed a cul­ture where many peo­ple just do not want to work," he said.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon said there would be an in­evitable "gnash­ing of teeth" when trans­fers and sub­si­dies are re­moved.

"One of the things about sub­si­dies, which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of the ex­pen­di­ture, is that it can­not be re­versed very eas­i­ly with­out a lot of weep­ing and gnash­ing of teeth. We live in an econ­o­my where we de­pend on the va­garies of en­er­gy prices and now quan­ti­ty, so the sen­si­ble thing would be to re­verse sub­si­dies and trans­fers when your econ­o­my turns down. Can you do that with­out pain? No, not in this type of econ­o­my," he said.Ramkissoon said steps should be tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly to re­duce sub­si­dies.

"Could we please not in­crease them in 2015 so that as a pro­por­tion of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) they will fall over time? Fast ris­ing ex­pen­di­tures bring pres­sures on your for­eign re­serves. I will say no more on that in the con­text of what has hap­pened re­cent­ly," he said.Bharath com­ment­ed on a T&T Guardian re­port yes­ter­day in which Raquel Moses, pres­i­dent of In­vest TT, said al­though there was a glob­al in­crease in for­eign in­vest­ment last year, T&T was not able to cap­i­talise on it.

"We have got to make sure that we cre­ate that en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to be able to get that ad­di­tion­al 13 per cent in­crease in glob­al in­vest­ment next year," the min­ster said.


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