On Tues­day, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) raised its fore­cast for glob­al eco­nom­ic growth up­ward by more than one per­cent­age point.

Ac­cord­ing to the OECD, ac­tiv­i­ty in many sec­tors has picked up and par­tial­ly adapt­ed to pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions.

Im­por­tant­ly, it not­ed that vac­cine roll­out, al­though un­even, is gain­ing mo­men­tum and gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States, is like­ly to pro­vide a ma­jor boost to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

But prospects for sus­tain­able growth vary wide­ly be­tween coun­tries and sec­tors. Faster and more ef­fec­tive vac­ci­na­tion de­ploy­ment across the world the re­port said is crit­i­cal.

Not­ing that the glob­al vac­cine roll­out re­mains un­even, with re­stric­tions re­main­ing in some coun­tries and sec­tors, it said the out­look for growth would im­prove (up­side sce­nario) if the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of dos­es ac­cel­er­ates, is bet­ter co-or­di­nat­ed around the world and gets ahead of virus mu­ta­tions.

“This would al­low con­tain­ment mea­sures to be re­laxed more rapid­ly and glob­al out­put to ap­proach pre-pan­dem­ic pro­jec­tions for ac­tiv­i­ty. But con­sumer spend­ing and busi­ness con­fi­dence would be hit (down­side sce­nario) if vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes are not fast enough to cut in­fec­tion rates or if new vari­ants be­come more wide­spread and re­quire changes to cur­rent vac­cines.”

It is now com­mon knowl­edge that the pan­dem­ic has cost tril­lions of dol­lars to the world econ­o­my and for T&T it has meant bil­lions in lost rev­enue and ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture.

At a time when the T&T econ­o­my was al­ready frag­ile the pan­dem­ic has hit us where it hurts most, in our pock­ets.

It is al­most a year now since the first case of COVID-19 was record­ed in T&T and a year since there has been sig­nif­i­cant lock down of the coun­try. Its bor­ders have re­mained closed, thou­sands have lost their jobs, hun­dreds of busi­ness­es have closed down, thou­sands of lives ei­ther dis­rupt­ed or ru­ined. Even Car­ni­val has for the first time been can­celled and not post­poned.

The gov­ern­ment has boast­ed to any­one who would lis­ten that it has done a great job in keep­ing the pop­u­la­tion safe from the un­con­trolled spread of the dead­ly virus.

The coun­try’s death toll, be­ing rel­a­tive­ly small com­pared to the risks that we faced, and I am sure there are peo­ple who will look at what is hap­pen­ing to our Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters in Ja­maica and breathe a sigh of re­lief that a sim­i­lar faith has not be­fall­en us as a coun­try.

The truth is that as an econ­o­my high­ly de­pen­dent on tourism and ser­vices it would have been all but im­pos­si­ble for the oth­er Cari­com mem­bers, with the ex­cep­tion of Guyana and Suri­name, to close their bor­ders the way T&T did.

In the last year the gov­ern­ment has al­so kept most of its em­ploy­ees at work, choos­ing not to send home any­one and bor­row­ing mon­ey to pay salaries while heav­i­ly draw­ing down on the coun­try’s sav­ings to keep us afloat.

I have al­ready writ­ten ex­ten­sive­ly on the gov­ern­ment’s gen­er­al eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and how it has en­dan­gered the econ­o­my and we are now at a point where lock­down or no lock­down we are in deep trou­ble.

The suc­cess­ful roll-out of vac­cines glob­al­ly is like­ly to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact T&T’s econ­o­my. Al­ready the in­creased de­mand for pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts, along with re­duced pro­duc­tion from the Saud­is has led to im­proved glob­al prices for crude oil. This in­crease in oil prices will add some rev­enue to the gov­ern­ment cof­fers.

Should vac­cines be rolled out suc­cess­ful­ly it is like­ly to al­low Caribbean is­lands to re­turn to some nor­mal­cy and with that pent up de­mand for glob­al trav­el and hol­i­days, one rea­son­ably ex­pects the Caribbean is­lands will be ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries for tourists ea­ger to go on hol­i­day. This will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on T&T’s ex­port of man­u­fac­tured goods, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the food and bev­er­age sec­tors

The Unit­ed King­dom has per­haps the world’s most suc­cess­ful vac­ci­na­tion roll out thus far and the British gov­ern­ment has clear­ly set out a course to emerge from lock-down and re­turn to nor­mal lives.

The Unit­ed States has al­so made progress un­der the Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion and the CDC has this week is­sued new guide­lines to its vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion on how they may be­gin that re­turn to nor­mal­cy.

In the case of T&T we have no such good for­tune. In­stead we have the em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion where one of the Caribbean’s rich­est coun­tries is last per capi­ta in its vac­ci­na­tion of its pop­u­la­tion with a Health Min­is­ter who ap­pears to be fum­bling in the dark about vac­cines.

From the em­bar­rass­ment of claim­ing the 2000 dos­es was a gift from In­dia and not Bar­ba­dos to his come-down that two months lat­er than promised we are on­ly get­ting enough dos­es to in­oc­u­late 15,000 mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion, it has not been Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s finest hour.

For a man who is not shy about boast­ing con­stant­ly, al­most with every sen­tence he ut­ters, about the great job he has done, led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, it is now al­most painful to see clear­ly that the roll­out is at best stut­ter­ing if not stalled.

He is yet to ar­tic­u­late a re­al plan that has dates and amounts of vac­cine to be re­ceived and the num­ber does, nor can he cred­i­bly tell us when we can ex­pect to reach heard im­mu­ni­ty.

Deyals­ingh, and by ex­ten­sion the gov­ern­ment, still has not clear­ly ex­plained the débâ­cle with the In­di­an gov­ern­ment nor how the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors can work to get this done?

No one de­nies that all coun­tries are fac­ing vac­cine chal­lenges but what is al­most fright­en­ing is how we have been ex­posed by oth­er Cari­com coun­tries that don’t even have an em­bassy in In­dia and yet can re­ceive vac­cine and be­gin the moves to re­open their econ­o­my, while we seem to have been caught off guard by the so called In­di­an gift or vac­cine diplo­ma­cy.

Is it that we were hop­ing for free vac­cines from Chi­na or a ma­jor pow­er? It is that we were try­ing to play cheap hop­ing to beg for free vac­cines and on­ly pay for 33 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty?

These may seem ab­surd ques­tions but they have to be asked based on where we find our­selves.

Sure­ly the prob­lem in get­ting the vac­cine can­not be one of mon­ey or re­sources? If ever there was a time when the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund can be used, it’s for vac­cine pur­chase.

In Sep­tem­ber last year Deyals­ingh told the coun­try; “What does that mean for T&T, 20 per­cent of our pop­u­la­tion is 280,000. In the first chance of the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve, we will be get­ting vac­cines to vac­ci­nate 280,000 cit­i­zens of T&T.

“Af­ter that, in the sec­ond wave of the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve, Cab­i­net has signed on with Co­v­ax to pur­chase vac­cines for 33 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. 33 per cent is 462,000 so af­ter we get out first 280,000 we will then get an­oth­er 182,000 to vac­ci­nate 33 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. That is how the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty works.”

It is now clear this will not come to past. In the mean­time the coun­try’s econ­o­my and cit­i­zens re­main un­der lim­it­ed lock­down.

Restau­rants still can­not serve al­co­hol, a mea­sure that makes no sense, taxi dri­vers are still at a re­duced num­ber of pas­sen­gers, bars and en­ter­tain­ment re­main hurt by gov­ern­ment mea­sures and T&T re­mains the laugh­ing stock of the re­gion.

Even at this stage it is in­creas­ing clear we will not get to heard im­mu­ni­ty by the end of the year and, in that case, we are like­ly to go an­oth­er year with­out Car­ni­val come 2022. There will be more psy­cho­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pain to bear.

The gov­ern­ment talks about sav­ing lives, what about peo­ple’s liveli­hoods.

We can­not all work at CEPEP.