T&T is not in any slump, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said yes­ter­day. He, how­ev­er, sound­ed a "word of cau­tion," ad­vis­ing strong mea­sures of fis­cal dis­ci­pline. Dook­er­an said he did not see as good an in­ter­na­tion­al pic­ture in the next cou­ple years' as to­day's pic­ture. He spoke about the sit­u­a­tion dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives' de­bate on a bill for sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing of $1.5 bil­lion to fund var­i­ous mat­ters in sev­en min­istries. Not­ing re­cent Cen­tral Bank state­ments on the econ­o­my, Dook­er­an said the "sen­sa­tion­al press" had "tak­en this out of con­text." He added: "There were strong head­lines that were put out on the news­pa­pers about re­ces­sion. I say here to­day, based on the in­for­ma­tion we have at the Fi­nance Min­istry, T&T is not in any slump."

Dook­er­an list­ed pro­ject­ed growth sta­tis­tics for var­i­ous coun­tries which he said have now re­vised pro­jec­tions down­ward. He said what T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not dif­fer­ent to oth­er coun­tries. Dook­er­an added: "When you look at T&T we had es­ti­mat­ed that we had turned the cor­ner and would have moved to growth rate of 1.5 per cent in 2012. "The re­cent fig­ures have sug­gest­ed there had been a slow­down in cer­tain ar­eas and we will now be pro­ject­ed to move at one per cent in spite of the slow­down, most­ly in the en­er­gy sec­tor." In the con­text of what was hap­pen­ing world­wide, he said T&T could feel a "sense of com­fort that it had turned the cor­ner." He al­so not­ed the last In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund as­sess­ment which in­di­cat­ed the econ­o­my had turned the cor­ner and ex­pect­ed growth in 2012.

Dook­er­an said when he found a growth re­duc­tion for 2012, he met with En­er­gy Min­istry and sec­tor of­fi­cials on that. He said he was told it was not sur­pris­ing. He said it was the re­sult of fail­ing in­vest­ment three years ago that were now be­ing seen. PNM MPs laughed loud­ly and protest­ed that. Dook­er­an not­ed a drop in hy­dro-car­bon re­serves in 2009 which picked up in sub­se­quent years. He said the re­sults would take time to ma­te­ri­alise. He al­so not­ed an in­crease in oil rigs from three in 2010 to 12 cur­rent­ly. He, how­ev­er, added: "I' m not here to sug­gest that we have cov­ered all the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties ahead of us. From ex­ter­nal de­vel­op­ments, it's al­so clear we must take stock of how we de­cide to move for­ward in the fu­ture." He said once T&T main­tained a pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry in the rest of the year, it would be able to reap the re­wards of Gov­ern­ment's frame­work.