Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah be­lieves fu­el prices will in­crease and the TT dol­lar will be de­val­ued soon if Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues on its path to shut down Petrotrin.

Speak­ing on the Oc­to­ber 1 bud­get at a press con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do of­fice yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said the up­com­ing deficit bud­get will bring hard­ship on the peo­ple of T&T. Based on cur­rent poli­cies, Ab­du­lah said it seems Gov­ern­ment is in­tent on set­ting up mega projects which will swal­low huge amounts of for­eign ex­change, ex­ac­er­bat­ing the cur­rent for­eign ex­change cri­sis fac­ing T&T.

“We ex­pect to have a bud­get in which the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will al­lo­cate out of the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme to fence­line com­mu­ni­ties of South Trinidad, to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery and the im­pact on 3,500 work­ers and their fam­i­lies,” Ab­du­lah said.

“We ex­pect to see fu­el prices in­crease and bring greater hard­ship to the peo­ple, as trans­porta­tion costs will set to rise again.

“We do not ex­pect to see se­ri­ous ini­tia­tives with agri­cul­ture or in­creas­ing the out­put of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, or any­thing else that will gen­er­ate sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T.”

Say­ing mega projects such as the dry­dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties in La Brea will not bring sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, he said: “There is al­so a lack of trans­paren­cy with two ma­jor ho­tels in To­ba­go. The seabridge has col­lapsed with on­ly the Spir­it in op­er­a­tion as the Cabo Star is down for dry­dock­ing and the Galleons Pas­sage is not in op­er­a­tion.”

Re­gard­ing de­val­u­a­tion, Ab­du­lah said the sys­tem is not one where Gov­ern­ment can make a de­ci­sion to de­val­ue the cur­ren­cy.

“We have a float­ing arrange­ment in which the Cen­tral Bank in­jects a large quan­ti­ty of US in the mar­ket to keep the sup­ply of US dol­lars in sync with de­mand, so the price will not change. That is why the dol­lar has not moved,” Ab­du­lah said.

How­ev­er, he said the Cen­tral Bank will have dif­fi­cul­ty in mak­ing these in­jec­tions once Petrotrin is closed.

“Giv­en the fact that for­eign ex­change re­serves have been de­clin­ing over the past few years be­cause the Cen­tral Bank is us­ing re­serves, we are in trou­ble.

“Giv­en the rate of de­cline of for­eign ex­change re­serves, in two years’ time we will be in a dif­fi­cult, place,” he said.

He said the im­por­ta­tion of fu­el will al­so use up valu­able for­eign ex­change.

“Gov­ern­ment says it will off­set this with the sale of fu­el in Trin­mar but we have done our cal­cu­la­tions and we have found that im­por­ta­tion of 28,000 bar­rels of day of fu­el at an av­er­age price of $85 ex­ceeds what we will get if we sell 40,000 bar­rels of oil per day,” he ex­plained, not­ing that T&T crude was not the best qual­i­ty and will not fetch a high price.