Gail Alexan­der

If T&T's growth pro­jec­tions are not re­alised Gov­ern­ment must be pre­pared to take hard pol­i­cy de­ci­sions as it charts the fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty in the next two years, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an. He said so in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day while say­ing he did not want to say all "is rosy." He was pi­lot­ing a bill to sup­ple­ment the $54 bil­lion bud­get by $1.5 bil­lion more. The ex­pen­di­ture will fund projects and ac­tiv­i­ty with­in sev­en min­istries.

Fol­low­ing his "rosy" re­mark, Dook­er­an added: "We recog­nise it is nec­es­sary at this time to car­ry for­ward with the equa­tion and the growth mo­men­tum must in fact be re­stored. "If those pro­jec­tions are not re­alised, as in­deed has hap­pened in many parts of the coun­try, then we must be pre­pared to take hard pol­i­cy de­ci­sions as we chart our fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty in the next two years and that I can as­sure you this Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to do in the in­ter­est of the ben­e­fits of the fu­ture of T&T."

Dook­er­an said present­ly Gov­ern­ment had been able to nav­i­gate a fi­nan­cial frame­work and pack­age that en­sured sta­bil­i­ty, re­moved risk and dealt with the prob­lems of to­day and set in mo­tion a sense of fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. As he did in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day, Dook­er­an not­ed re­cent press re­ports on the Cen­tral Bank's re­cent state­ments.

On Mon­day, Dook­er­an had de­nied press re­ports T&T was in a slump. He was then ac­cused by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley of, say­ing the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor was in­ac­cu­rate. Row­ley said Dook­er­an had crossed "the ru­bi­con" by tak­ing is­sue with the gov­er­nor's state­ments.

Yes­ter­day, in the Sen­ate, Dook­er­an, say­ing he did not want to get in­to the press re­ports on the Cen­tral Bank re­port, added: "The (Cen­tral Bank) re­port is in­deed a very an­a­lyt­i­cal and sol­id doc­u­ment. It iden­ti­fies the risk we are fac­ing and some of the cur­rent chal­lenges have in fact been placed on the agen­da.

"But it al­so points out some of the chang­ing trends that took place in the TT econ­o­my over the last two years. Clear­ly that part of the re­port was not giv­en the kind of press cov­er­age it should have." He said the Cen­tral Bank re­port, which not­ed a growth rate of 1.5 per cent and a sub­se­quent drop to one per cent, was not a phe­nom­e­non fac­ing T&T alone and must be seen as a glob­al oc­cur­rence.

He re­it­er­at­ed sta­tis­tics of pro­ject­ed growth for some coun­tries which have now re­vised the fig­ures down­ward. Dook­er­an al­so not­ed the March 14 IMF re­port which stat­ed T&T's econ­o­my was turn­ing the cor­ner. He said T&T was not an is­land un­to it­self and al­so faced up to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it was not ful­ly in­su­lat­ed from glob­al de­vel­op­ments,

He said the Cli­co so­lu­tion, set­tling out­stand­ing con­trac­tors' claims and VAT re­funds, cost al­most $20 bil­lion in the last two years. He added Gov­ern­ment was fo­cus­ing on fi­nanc­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment. PNM sen­a­tor, econ­o­mist Lester Hen­ry, who spoke af­ter Dook­er­an, said the Sen­ate on­ly saw the Fi­nance Min­is­ter when he need­ed more mon­ey for the coun­try.