Yvonne Ba­boolal

T&T is not in a re­ces­sion, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Con­rad Enill in­sist­ed last Thurs­day, re­fut­ing such re­port­ed claims by busi­ness lead­ers. In­stead, T&T is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing "low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty," the min­is­ter dis­closed in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian at his In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Tow­ers of­fice on Wright­son Road, last Thurs­day. Enill made the state­ment af­ter he was asked about the re­port­ed re­ces­sion. A news­pa­per re­port, last Thurs­day, said busi­ness lead­ers be­lieved that the Cen­tral Bank's most re­cent eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors had con­firmed that T&T was in re­ces­sion.

The in­di­ca­tor from the Cen­tral Bank was that the coun­try's eco­nom­ic growth fell by more than four per cent be­tween Oc­to­ber, 2008, and March, 2009. How­ev­er, the En­er­gy Min­is­ter charged that the in­for­ma­tion from Cen­tral Bank was in­ter­pret­ed "how they want­ed," and that the bank nev­er said T&T was in a re­ces­sion. "Cen­tral Bank did not say we're in a re­ces­sion. The bank can't say that, be­cause it's not true. "Some com­men­ta­tors have de­cid­ed that, once you have two quar­ters of low­er eco­nom­ic growth, you are in a re­ces­sion. "But you have to look year to year to de­ter­mine if you're in a re­ces­sion. Quar­ter to quar­ter is cycli­cal." Enill added fur­ther: "You can't have a re­ces­sion in T&T with full em­ploy­ment. It doesn't make sense."

Not­ing that you could have low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, how­ev­er, be­cause of less rev­enue, he asked: "Which coun­try has a re­ces­sion and a five per cent un­em­ploy­ment rate at the same time? In 2001, the un­em­ploy­ment rate was 12 per cent and I don't know we had a re­ces­sion then." He said since last year there was a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of jobs not tak­en. "I'm see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of va­can­cies in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor not be­ing filled. "There are in­di­vid­u­als work­ing three and four jobs. That's why we had to bring in for­eign­ers." Enill said the sit­u­a­tion was such that the man­agers of cer­tain in­dus­tries found them­selves hav­ing to re­duce their re­quire­ments for labour. He sug­gest­ed that job va­can­cies were not be­ing filled be­cause "some peo­ple may want mon­ey, but not work."

Pres­i­dent of the Greater Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Stephen Cadiz, said they con­tin­ued to see job loss­es in all sec­tors in the area and signs of a re­ces­sion were ev­i­dent all over. Pres­i­dent of San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Daphne Bartlett, said T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the symp­toms of a re­ces­sion since the end of last year. Out­lin­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween a re­ces­sion and low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, Enill said a re­ces­sion had to do with ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, in­fla­tion and ma­jor re­duc­tion in GDP. "If these con­di­tions are present, we can con­clude that we're in a re­ces­sion. None of these things are present." Told that hun­dreds are los­ing jobs all over the coun­try, he replied: "The way you look at it is not in the con­text of ab­solute num­bers, but in the va­can­cies that are not be­ing filled."

So what is low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty? "If you used to spend $52 bil­lion, you're now spend­ing $40 bil­lion," he said, sum­ming up that sit­u­a­tion. "Gov­ern­ment has to man­age the econ­o­my on the ba­sis of main­tain­ing macro-eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals. This sim­ply means you don't spend all the mon­ey you get; you save some." And how is low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty go­ing to af­fect the av­er­age cit­i­zen? "It doesn't af­fect the av­er­age cit­i­zen," Enill replied. "I don't know that they're pay­ing more for gas, or (have) stopped get­ting the ed­u­ca­tion grant (from the Gov­ern­ment)." So the na­tion has noth­ing to be wor­ried about?

"Low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty al­so sug­gests you have to take a view where you get more ef­fi­cient and pro­duc­tive, be­cause wastage could have a big im­pact on you. Your re­sources will have to do more for you." He said du­ra­tion of the pe­ri­od of low­er eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T would de­pend on how Gov­ern­ment pro­posed to spend in the fu­ture, and on what they would con­cen­trate the spend­ing. The an­swers to these ques­tions would be de­cid­ed by bud­get time lat­er in the year, he said. T&T is the on­ly coun­try "in this part of the world" that is not do­ing too bad­ly eco­nom­i­cal­ly, Enill point­ed out. "We're the on­ly coun­try in this part of the world to have the abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue with our de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. Most of the oth­ers are in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion.

"Al­though we have low­er prices, we still have a lev­el of rev­enue from trad­ing in en­er­gy. There's no trade in tourism, agri­cul­ture or off­shore ac­tiv­i­ties in any part of the Caribbean. "Most ter­ri­to­ries are tak­ing a beat­ing." Asked if it was due to pru­dent fis­cal man­age­ment by the Gov­ern­ment, he replied: "Gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed and main­tained the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund. On a year­ly ba­sis, we had sur­plus­es which went to the Cen­tral Bank."