JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

PP must take some blame for recession

by

20160103

While Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has blamed the Gov­ern­ment for T&T's eco­nom­ic cri­sis, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) says the Peo­ple Part­ner­ship must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the mis­man­age­ment of pub­lic funds and its fail­ure to min­imise the ef­fects of falling oil and gas prices.

In their first me­dia con­fer­ence for 2016, MSJ leader David Ab­du­lah yes­ter­day fo­cused on the re­build­ing of the econ­o­my, say­ing that in­creased hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion was need­ed if the coun­try is to climb out of the re­ces­sion.

Out­lin­ing three rea­sons for the eco­nom­ic de­cline, Ab­du­lah said the de­crease in oil and gas prices and low­er pro­duc­tion has rip­pled to af­fect the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing the pro­duc­tion and ex­port of methanol, am­mo­nia and Liqui­fied Na­tion­al Gas (LNG).

This, he said, was com­pound­ed by a waste of pub­lic funds over the last five years when oil and gas prices soared, which should have pro­vid­ed the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. How­ev­er, he said fail­ure to find al­ter­na­tive and sus­tain­able rev­enue sources was not lim­it­ed to the PP but suc­ces­sive past gov­ern­ments.

"Dur­ing the last year, the (PP) gov­ern­ment failed to ac­knowl­edge the fact that we had an eco­nom­ic storm de­vel­op­ing and there­fore they failed to put in place mech­a­nisms that would be­gin to mit­i­gate or min­imise the fall­out from low­er prices. The last gov­ern­ment has to be held re­spon­si­ble," Ab­du­lah said.

To Ab­du­lah's cred­it, he did pre­dict T&T was head­ed for a re­ces­sion back in Jan­u­ary 2014, ow­ing to low oil prices, plans by en­er­gy com­pa­nies to cut staff and out­stand­ing bills by the then gov­ern­ment.

Ab­du­lah said the MSJ would con­tin­ue to make sug­ges­tions on tak­ing T&T for­ward as it seeks to make it­self a for­mi­da­ble par­ty in 2016. Among his sug­ges­tions was to max­imise po­ten­tial rev­enue from hy­dro­car­bons by in­creas­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion while di­ver­si­fy­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor. This in­cludes the sales of en­er­gy ser­vices to oth­er coun­tries giv­en T&T's his­to­ry as an en­er­gy pro­duc­er. This, he said, can al­so fill short­fall in for­eign ex­change and cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs for na­tion­als.

He said agri­cul­ture al­so has to be giv­en a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty for ex­port earn­ings, sug­gest­ing the Gov­ern­ment tap in­to the niche mar­ket for lo­cal co­coa.

Tourism is an­oth­er po­ten­tial area and he pro­posed the re­de­vel­op­ment of East Port-of-Spain to a her­itage city. He said on New Year's Day tourists from a cruise ship were wan­der­ing around Port-of-Spain but there were no at­trac­tions for them to see.

With a her­itage city in place, tourists would be able see how pans are tuned, en­joy Ca­lyp­so shows and buy steel­pans and CDs for top US dol­lars. He ad­mit­ted this would re­quire the con­trol of crime in the city, which he said needs to be dealt with through ed­u­ca­tion and jobs.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored