Nadaleen Singh

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon has urged Gov­ern­ment to give care­ful thought to any cut­backs in ex­pen­di­ture."If you place too much em­pha­sis on cut­ting back ex­pen­di­ture then you cre­ate prob­lems for busi­ness," he warned when he ad­dress a break­fast meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of T&T on Fri­day.

"You've got to be dis­cre­tionary, you've got to be ju­di­cious in terms of how you deal with ex­pen­di­ture. Giv­en the deficits you have been run­ning when you should have been run­ning sur­plus­es, for times like these we have no choice to cut back on ex­pen­di­ture. It is very im­por­tant to be very strate­gic in choos­ing which ex­pen­di­tures to cut back, by how much and for how long."

Dr Ramkissoon said mak­ing cuts by it­self can't work since rev­enue must be raised.

"We have been bor­row­ing to fund trans­fers and sub­si­dies to a large ex­tent. We have been do­ing some wrong things and we need to put a stop to that," he said

Am­cham TT pres­i­dent Ravi Suryade­vara said there is still time to chart a way for­ward for the coun­try de­spite the re­ces­sion. He said the T&T econ­o­my is very sta­ble and the coun­try is far­ing bet­ter than its neigh­bours.

"It has to be a re­al­i­ty check for all stake­hold­ers which is the nec­es­sary con­sen­sus the gov­ern­ment needs to fol­low giv­en the present cir­cum­stances as we con­fig­ure the new eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty," he said.

Suryade­vara said T&T should be po­si­tioned at­trac­tive­ly and reg­u­lat­ed sound­ly to en­cour­age in­vest­ments.

"At the present time con­ti­nu­ity in projects to bring much need­ed gas re­serves on-line need to be in align­ment with the recog­ni­tion that there is a com­pet­i­tive land­scape in at­tract­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the en­er­gy sec­tor," he said.

He called for poli­cies that would al­low mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to "weath­er the storm of de­clines in the econ­o­my."

"Fu­ture pol­i­cy align­ment, es­pe­cial­ly bear­ing in mind the present predica­ment we face is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial," he said.

Suryade­vara, who crit­i­cised of the per­sis­tent deficits in the coun­try since 2009, said that lim­it­ed the re­sponse op­tions of the Gov­ern­ment. He said it is time for a re­al­i­ty check so that the pub­lic can un­der­stand the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

"In­di­vid­ual and in­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty must be first ex­hib­it­ed to un­der­stand the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion. This is not a doom and gloom, this is sim­ply what we do every day in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty," he said, adding that T&T has be­come more re­silient to shocks in com­par­i­son to its Latin Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts.

He won­dered, how­ev­er, how long the coun­try could con­tin­ue to be re­silient to shocks since the cost of debt is ris­ing. He said Am­chamTT mem­bers have made sug­ges­tions to the gov­ern­ment that "yield greater ef­fi­cien­cy of pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture, such as in­creas­ing fund­ing to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit ....in­creas­ing the re­sources al­lo­cat­ed to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al."

Suryade­vara called for the new pub­lic pro­cure­ment regime to im­prove T&T's com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion.