Visham Babwah, head of the T&T Automotive Dealers Association, says he is not impressed with the measures announced by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in response to falling oil prices.
"Taking into consideration that the price of oil has been sliding downwards for the past three months and trends suggest that it may even go lower than US$45 a barrel based on statements coming out of major Opec producers, I am concerned about prices falling so low that the economy might be crippled," he said."The Prime Minister has not indicated what will be done if prices should fall much lower."
Babwah said more details should have been given."What projects are going to stop? What ministries would be affected? What does the government define as non-essential services? People need to know. A lot of people are in limbo wondering if their services have now become non-essential," he said.
Babwah said cuts should have been made to programmes such as Cepep and URP as that would have "freed persons to re-enter the workforce and take up long term jobs instead of using hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds to prop those programmes."He said businessmen are also facing porblems to get foreign exchange.
"With the price of oil going lower it would mean less US dollars in the government coffers. More details should be given about the position with the supply of US dollars to businessmen. Even if we choose to diversify we still need US dollars to import everything," he said.