Se­nior econ­o­mist at Re­pub­lic Bank's head of­fice on Park Street, Port-of-Spain, Dr Ronald Ramkissoon says both the de­mand and val­ue for our oil and gas com­modi­ties have de­clined and this pe­ri­od of stag­na­tion can po­ten­tial­ly push the glob­al econ­o­my in­to an­oth­er re­ces­sion. "The ex­pec­ta­tion pri­or to the US down­grad­ing two Fri­days ago, was that we would have grad­u­al­ly got­ten out of an eco­nom­ic de­cline. Things have got­ten worse and now we are not so sure that world growth and de­mand for our com­modi­ties (oil and gas) would grow at all. "In fact, we are talk­ing about a sec­ond re­ces­sion," he told the Sun­day Guardian as he re­flect­ed up­on the "neg­a­tive growth" ex­pe­ri­enced over the past two years.

Ramkissoon added: "The Gov­ern­ment gets its rev­enue pri­mar­i­ly from the ex­port of oil and gas. "To­day, the quan­ti­ties of these com­modi­ties are de­clin­ing and now we see that their prices are al­so de­clin­ing, so what does that tell us go­ing for­ward? It says that we are like­ly to be un­der even greater pres­sure in the next cou­ple years," Ramkissoon added. The econ­o­mist said un­der these cir­cum­stances and more par­tic­u­lar­ly, giv­en the fact that the Gov­ern­ment has "been run­ning a deficit," the State will there­fore "be re­strict­ed in how much it can in­crease its wage bill or re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture."

He added: "If a lot is spent on re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, then less mon­ey would have to be spent on the na­tion's cap­i­tal in­vest­ments, so there­fore the Gov­ern­ment has to bal­ance all of these con­sid­er­a­tions be­fore it can ar­rive at a de­ci­sion of what such in­crease should or should not be," he said. Ramkissoon added that in light of the cur­rent state of the na­tion's econ­o­my, a na­tion­al strike was not the way to go since it stood to "cut back on pro­duc­tion and dis­rupt the every­day liv­ing of cit­i­zens" which "can­not be seen to be in the best in­ter­ests of the so­ci­ety nor its work­ers."