GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As the coun­try pre­pares for the up­com­ing na­tion­al 2026 bud­get ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered ear­ly next month, UWI pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics Roger Ho­sein says there needs to be a strate­gic eco­nom­ic push to take the coun­try for­ward.

Speak­ing on CNC3’S Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ho­sein out­lined the ar­eas that he be­lieves Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in­clud­ing low­er­ing the non-en­er­gy fis­cal bal­ance, im­prov­ing non-en­er­gy ex­port rev­enues and en­hanc­ing the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate.

“If he fo­cus­es on re­duc­ing the non-en­er­gy fis­cal bal­ance and fo­cus­ing on in­creas­ing non-en­er­gy ex­port rev­enues and im­prov­ing the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, he is well on the way to hav­ing the right method­ol­o­gy in terms of a strate­gic plan to fix the econ­o­my. So, it re­quires that type of high-lev­el think­ing be­ing brought to bear on where he places his first step in prepa­ra­tion for where he places his sec­ond, third, fourth and fifth steps as he push­es for­ward,” Ho­sein ex­plained.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing on­go­ing ef­forts to forge new en­er­gy-re­lat­ed re­la­tion­ships, Ho­sein ques­tioned their po­ten­tial for a sub­stan­tive, long-term fix, as­sert­ing, “the sub­stan­tive bailout of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my over the next 15 years will have to come from non-en­er­gy ex­ports, trade and from tourism, oth­er ser­vice ex­ports and from re­mit­tances.”

He ar­gued that any short-term en­er­gy rev­enue should be ster­ilised—placed in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund—to pro­vide a much-need­ed “smooth­ing of con­sump­tion.”

Ho­sein said the re­cent cuts to so­cial pro­grammes, such as CEPEP and URP, were “ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary,” as they were dri­ven by a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in the na­tion’s pri­ma­ry rev­enue source. He re­called that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has fall­en from 4,400 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day (MM­CF/d) in 2010 to 2,600 MM­CF to­day.

Ho­sein equat­ed the up­com­ing bud­get’s im­por­tance to the piv­otal bud­gets of the mid-1980s, a time of deep eco­nom­ic cri­sis, not­ing that when ex­ter­nal debt is sub­tract­ed from us­able re­serves, the na­tion projects a deficit of rough­ly mi­nus US$3B by the end of 2026.

CEO of Am­cham T&T Ni­rad Tewarie, who was al­so on Morn­ing Brew, said Gov­ern­ment does not have much wig­gle room when it comes to bor­row­ing.