An­na-Lisa Paul

Busi­ness, ed­u­ca­tion, labour and civ­il so­ci­ety groups got to­geth­er yes­ter­day for di­a­logue on the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and called on Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor to re-eval­u­ate their knee-jerk re­spons­es and ad­just­ments to the re­ces­sion.

Among those tak­ing part in the dis­cus­sion was for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Con­rad Enill who de­scribed 2016 as an "awak­en­ing" for T&T, and claimed the coun­try had been in a re­ces­sion since 2010, al­though it was on­ly pub­li­cised late last year.

Enill was part of the four-mem­ber pan­el that dis­cussed the re­ces­sion and the na­tion's re­ac­tion to it. He said the word re­ces­sion was enough to neg­a­tive­ly af­fect so­ci­ety as peo­ple im­me­di­ate­ly en­vis­aged "a sense of doom and gloom."

Al­so tak­ing part in the dis­cus­sion, host­ed by the CTS Col­lege of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence Lim­it­ed at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, were pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce Richie Sookhai; econ­o­mist and lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon; CEO of Hu­man Re­sources Tech­nolo­gies Court­ney Mc­Nish; and chief ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union Ozzy War­wick.

Enill said while many peo­ple ex­pect­ed Gov­ern­ment to do some­thing to end the re­ces­sion, it is up to in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions to change the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

Mod­er­a­tor Sookhai called for a fresh ap­proach to deal­ing with is­sues such as low oil prices, de­clin­ing busi­ness con­fi­dence and the for­eign ex­change short­age.

While he com­mend­ed Gov­ern­ment for es­tab­lish­ing the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Com­mis­sion, Sookhai ap­pealed for a re­view of the make-up of the com­mit­tee as he said it should re­flect the wider con­cerns of the cit­i­zens.

He al­so called for more for­eign ex­change to be made avail­able to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as this was hin­der­ing them from freely en­gag­ing with for­eign-based sup­pli­ers, which had led to the gen­er­al slow­down af­fect­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es.

Sookhai, who ex­pressed con­cern at Gov­ern­ment's with­draw­al from the Her­itage and Sta­bi­liza­tion Fund with­out "the ap­par­ent and req­ui­site lev­els of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty" added: "Gov­ern­ment can­not look to raise rev­enue on­ly by in­creas­ing or im­pos­ing new tax­es on the pop­u­la­tion." Ar­joon said low en­er­gy prices cou­pled with a slow down in pro­duc­tion, in­suf­fi­cient di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and in­ad­e­quate fi­nan­cial plan­ning had to led to T&T's cur­rent eco­nom­ic state. He said this had been fur­ther com­pound­ed by a frag­ile fis­cal pol­i­cy as the last bud­get had seen gov­ern­ment in­tro­duce mea­sures aimed at in­creas­ing rev­enue and procur­ing sus­tain­able fi­nanc­ing for the State.

With a re­duced state ex­pen­di­ture of sev­en per cent and a widened tax base in the form of in­creased VAT col­lec­tions and busi­ness and Green Fund levies, Ar­joon said the Cen­tral Bank pol­i­cy rate had in­creased to 4.75 per cent last year–a 73 per cent in­crease since Au­gust 2014. He said it was pos­si­ble that dur­ing the sec­ond half of this year, there could ne a fur­ther in­crease by 50 ba­sis points, bring­ing the rate to 5.25 per cent.

He said all this was be­ing done to curb cap­i­tal flight and com­bat in­fla­tion, in light of the T&T dol­lar's de­pre­ci­a­tion and the re­sump­tion of rate hikes in the Unit­ed States.

War­wick said de­clin­ing oil prices had on­ly high­light­ed the scale of the prob­lem as "Trinidad and To­ba­go has been shrink­ing for a while now."

He said the trade union move­ment is open to di­a­logue but the bur­den had to be shared by all. He said it was un­fair that work­ers alone are be­ing made to bear the fall­out from the re­ces­sion.