The Covid-19 out­break has had dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on the world econ­o­my and if the virus’ im­pacts are in­ten­si­fied - it can mean neg­a­tive glob­al growth for the first quar­ter of 2020.

This ac­cord­ing to Dr In­dera Sage­wan, who was cit­ing da­ta from the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD).

Speak­ing at a Busi­ness Lun­cheon host­ed by the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Sage­wan said: “There’s the an­tic­i­pa­tion that if the pan­dem­ic wors­ens, glob­al growth can fall to 1.5 per cent.”

Ac­cord­ing to the OECD, this virus presents the biggest dan­ger to the glob­al econ­o­my since the fi­nan­cial cri­sis of 2009 and is pro­ject­ed to cause a slow­down in glob­al growth to un­der two per cent.

Sage­wan said this means that the world econ­o­my will be pushed in­to a glob­al re­ces­sion. She said the glob­al econ­o­my was bor­der­ing on re­ces­sion in 2019 with a growth rate of 2.9 per cent but the an­tic­i­pa­tion was that pos­i­tive growth would have re­versed the out­comes of re­ces­sion in 2020.

How­ev­er, Sage­wan as­sert­ed: “Now what we are see­ing in 2020 that is go­ing to be wors­ened, in fact, there’s an an­tic­i­pa­tion that there is go­ing to be neg­a­tive growth in the first quar­ter of 2020.”

Sage­wan as­sert­ed that this dis­rupts sup­ply chains, es­pe­cial­ly with coun­tries that are tied to Chi­na - and the en­tire world, in terms of pro­duc­tion, is tied to Chi­na. She high­light­ed that the nov­el coro­n­avirus has had a crip­pling im­pact on trade.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Ro­han Sinanan, who said that the gov­ern­ment is mon­i­tor­ing the de­vel­op­ments as it re­lat­ed to Covid-19.

He said: “We are pre­pared and have tak­en all prac­ti­cal steps, for ex­am­ple sus­pend­ing the ar­rival of cruise ships to our shores.”

Sinanan said that the gov­ern­ment cares about the cit­i­zens of T&T, nonethe­less, he ex­pressed that some of the de­ci­sions made will af­fect the ship­ping in­dus­try. He in­di­cat­ed: “at the end of the day, we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the cit­i­zens of this coun­try.”

The Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that there are chal­lenges in the in­dus­try, in ar­eas like the yacht­ing sec­tor. He con­tin­ued: “A lot of our ports are not se­cured the way we would like to see them se­cured - this is go­ing to be a chal­leng­ing time for us as a coun­try.”

The Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced that the coun­try is at the fi­nal stage of ac­quir­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tan­cy firm to build T&T’s mar­itime in­dus­try.

He not­ed that the con­sul­tant would be com­ing in­to T&T next month.