Al­though T&T’s bud­get deficit is ex­pect­ed to triple, mov­ing from $5 bil­lion to $15 bil­lion, as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the more im­por­tant facts to con­sid­er are the sec­ondary im­pacts that are in­curred due to the virus.

This is the con­tention of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Eco­nom­ics lec­tur­er Dr Mar­lene Attzs.

Dur­ing a Vir­tu­al Sym­po­sium host­ed by UWI, Attzs said: “The chal­lenge is not sim­ply di­rect eco­nom­ic costs but more so the need to un­earth the sec­ondary, in­di­rect im­pacts for this pan­dem­ic to gain a full un­der­stand­ing of its ef­fects so that ap­pro­pri­ate pol­i­cy re­spons­es can be craft­ed.”

Attzs high­light­ed that the coun­try would be im­pact­ed as glob­al sup­ply chains are dis­rupt­ed be­cause the coun­try im­ports an av­er­age of 50 per cent from the Unit­ed States, Chi­na and Eu­rope.

The econ­o­mist al­so high­light­ed that the health sec­tor would have been im­pact­ed as well, as the coun­try would have had to spend sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­tures to fund ad­di­tion­al debt. Al­though Attzs dis­closed that the debt that the coun­try would in­cur is not sus­tain­able, she in­di­cat­ed that T&T is fac­ing an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion that would take more spend­ing than usu­al to ad­dress prob­lems that arise.

Attzs in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try will al­so be hit by low­er and de­clin­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of un­em­ploy­ment. And while com­mod­i­ty-based economies like T&T and Guyana would be af­fect­ed dras­ti­cal­ly, the rev­enues of tourism-based economies can de­cline by as much as 50 per cent.

Ac­cord­ing to Attzs, many things are quan­tifi­able dur­ing COVID-19, but the things that can­not be quan­ti­fied can il­lu­mi­nate flaws that can be high­light­ed.

She not­ed that aris­ing from the lock­down, it is ap­par­ent that da­ta on the small busi­ness side is “spo­radic”. Attzs ar­gued that there is a dearth of in­for­ma­tion as it re­gards to small busi­ness­es. She not­ed that the mul­ti­pli­er im­pact on small busi­ness­es might not be quan­tifi­able, as a re­sult of the lack of avail­able da­ta.

An­oth­er flaw, high­light­ed by Attzs lies with­in the man­date or pro­to­cols con­cern­ing the avoid­ance of con­tract­ing COVID-19: so­cial dis­tanc­ing and wash­ing hands. She in­di­cat­ed that this ar­gu­ment as­sumes peo­ple have a space in which they can be so­cial­ly dis­tanced and have ac­cess to wa­ter to wash their hands.

Attzs al­so re­ferred to Dr San­dra Reid’s pre­sen­ta­tion on the psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of so­cial dis­tanc­ing. Reid not­ed that so­cial dis­tanc­ing can be­gin to have an im­pact af­ter some time as a vir­tu­al con­nec­tion is not an ad­e­quate per­ma­nent sub­sti­tute for face to face in­ter­ac­tion.

Al­so speak­ing at the sym­po­sium was Dr Stan­ley Gid­dings who not­ed that so­cial dis­tanc­ing was very ef­fec­tive dur­ing the time of the Span­ish flu in 1918. How­ev­er, Gid­dings high­light­ed that re­lax­ing the non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tion (so­cial dis­tanc­ing) too ear­ly can re­sult in an­oth­er wave of the virus.