Yvonne Ba­boolal

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is "fol­low­ing PNM phi­los­o­phy" in its 2012 bud­get plans to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth, says for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Con­rad Enill. Fur­ther, if the Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly fol­lows through with these plans the econ­o­my would move for­ward and in­vestor con­fi­dence wold be re­vived once again, he pre­dict­ed. Enill, a sen­a­tor and min­is­ter in the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, made the ob­ser­va­tion when con­tact­ed for a re­sponse on the Gov­ern­ment's plans to re­vi­talise the econ­o­my through the cre­ation of jobs in the con­struc­tion sec­tor and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in a sneak peak of the bud­get last Sat­ur­day, al­so said the Gov­ern­ment plans to cre­ate in­cen­tives to boost in­vestor con­fi­dence.

Enill re­called, how­ev­er, that when the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in­sist­ed that the cre­ation of jobs through the con­struc­tion sec­tor and oth­er projects was nec­es­sary to stim­u­late the econ­o­my, it was the same UNC, when in Op­po­si­tion, that had ar­gued against its eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits. "They are now fol­low­ing PNM phi­los­o­phy. If the Gov­ern­ment gets in­volved in projects it is do­ing what the last gov­ern­ment knew," Enill not­ed. Adding that he has no dif­fi­cul­ty with the PP fol­low­ing PNM eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy, he said, "It is the cor­rect pre­scrip­tion for the prob­lems we cur­rent­ly have. "It has tak­en the Gov­ern­ment a lit­tle while but they have fig­ured it out." He said over the last year-and-a-half there has been a slow­ing down in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty to the detri­ment of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

As a re­sult, un­em­ploy­ment picked up, he added. Enill said the Gov­ern­ment has to in­ter­vene di­rect­ly to help re­vi­talise the econ­o­my, which is al­so af­fect­ed by the glob­al fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. Con­struc­tion projects cre­ate jobs in a short space of time and stim­u­late ac­tiv­i­ty that would move the econ­o­my for­ward, he said. "If you de­cide you are go­ing to build hous­es, labour­ers, project man­agers, ag­gre­gate are re­quired. "You are al­so ful­fill­ing a need. Some 98,000 peo­ple need hous­es and have the abil­i­ty to pay for them. "If the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to cre­ate jobs through the con­struc­tion sec­tor, I am say­ing yes, they can cre­ate the ac­tiv­i­ty they are look­ing for to move the econ­o­my for­ward.

"If they fol­low through on these projects the econ­o­my will start to grow once again and in­vestor con­fi­dence will in­crease." Enill was not sure that in­fla­tion would be kept down as the Gov­ern­ment hoped: "In­fla­tion has to do with de­mand and sup­ply. More than like­ly, it will go up. The Gov­ern­ment will al­so have to in­ter­vene and cre­ate spe­cial strate­gies to deal with in­fla­tion by cre­at­ing more sup­ply." He added T&T has done well de­spite what has been tak­ing place glob­al­ly. He cred­it­ed "what was done in the past" for this.

"Our abil­i­ty to move for­ward is be­cause of what was done in the past," he said. Told that some mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty felt the PP in­her­it­ed eco­nom­ic prob­lems cre­at­ed by the PNM, Enill said: "As far as I'm con­cerned that is a non-is­sue." He rea­soned that no gov­ern­ment should take over from an­oth­er not ex­pect­ing prob­lems. In­fla­tion and crime were prob­lems the PNM was al­so grap­pling with and if they were in pow­er they too would have had to find so­lu­tions to deal with them, he said.