GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics, Roger Ho­sein, has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the shut­down of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) had a dam­ag­ing ef­fect on T&T’s labour mar­ket, say­ing avail­able da­ta does not sup­port claims of wide­spread job loss or eco­nom­ic fall­out.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ho­sein ad­dressed the is­sue in the con­text of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s (IMF) lat­est Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion re­port on T&T, which projects eco­nom­ic growth of 0.8 per cent for 2026.

The re­port has been viewed as a cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic as­sess­ment of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic tra­jec­to­ry, high­light­ing con­tin­ued re­cov­ery and re­silience fol­low­ing re­cent glob­al and do­mes­tic chal­lenges.

In the in­ter­view, Ho­sein was asked whether the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to cut pro­grammes like CEPEP—a move that had sparked crit­i­cism from some quar­ters—played a role in the mod­est eco­nom­ic growth re­flect­ed in the IMF re­port. In re­sponse, he main­tained that there was no em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the clo­sure of the pro­gramme caused a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in em­ploy­ment con­di­tions.

“I have no prob­lem with the cut­ting of Cepep and when I look at the growth num­bers, when I look at the em­ploy­ment num­bers that came out, I did not see a col­lapse of the labour mar­ket,” Ho­sein stat­ed.

He point­ed to of­fi­cial labour force da­ta, not­ing that un­em­ploy­ment rates have ac­tu­al­ly de­clined over the pe­ri­od in ques­tion. “In fact, in the same labour force re­port, you are see­ing that the un­em­ploy­ment rate has gone down, and if you look at the over­all 2025 labour force da­ta com­pared to 2024, you would see that the labour mar­ket im­proved,” he added.

Ho­sein’s com­ments come as stake­hold­ers con­tin­ue to de­bate the best strate­gies for sus­tain­ing eco­nom­ic growth while man­ag­ing fis­cal con­straints. The IMF re­port it­self iden­ti­fied sev­er­al strengths in the coun­try’s cur­rent po­si­tion, in­clud­ing low in­fla­tion, steady cred­it ex­pan­sion and a well-cap­i­talised bank­ing sys­tem.

It al­so point­ed to suf­fi­cient for­eign re­serves, sup­port­ed by the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, as a buffer against ex­ter­nal shocks. At the same time, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has wel­comed the IMF’s find­ings, de­scrib­ing the Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion as an im­por­tant in­de­pen­dent re­view of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic per­for­mance and pol­i­cy di­rec­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that such as­sess­ments pro­vide valu­able in­sights in­to fis­cal pol­i­cy, fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and long-term growth prospects, while al­so help­ing to build in­vestor con­fi­dence. Ac­cord­ing to the IMF, eco­nom­ic growth in T&T is ex­pect­ed to strength­en over the medi­um term, dri­ven in part by new en­er­gy projects as well as con­tin­ued mo­men­tum in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try, in par­tic­u­lar, has been sin­gled out as a key con­trib­u­tor to re­cent gains, with out­put help­ing to re­turn the econ­o­my to pre-cri­sis lev­els.

“Im­por­tant­ly, the IMF specif­i­cal­ly not­ed the non-en­er­gy sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor as a key dri­ver of the re­cent eco­nom­ic growth to pre-cri­sis lev­els. TTMA views this as a sig­nif­i­cant ac­knowl­edge­ment of the role played by lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and the wider non-en­er­gy busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as an es­sen­tial en­gine for broad­er eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. Such an ac­knowl­edge­ment high­lights the im­por­tance of the work of the TTMA in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my via its ad­vo­ca­cy ef­forts, trade mis­sions and Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion, which re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor,” the TTMA stat­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has long ad­vo­cat­ed for poli­cies that sup­port non-en­er­gy in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing trade ini­tia­tives and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion ef­forts de­signed to ex­pand ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties and re­duce de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor. The IMF rec­om­mend­ed a se­ries of struc­tur­al re­forms aimed at ad­dress­ing these vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, in­clud­ing im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of the for­eign ex­change mar­ket, re­duc­ing non-pri­or­i­ty spend­ing, and adopt­ing a more ro­bust medi­um-term fis­cal frame­work. Ho­sein al­so weighed in on gov­ern­ment spend­ing, not­ing that an in­crease in state ex­pen­di­ture could have a sta­bil­is­ing ef­fect on em­ploy­ment.

“So an in­crease in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture in 2026 to 3.4 per cent, high­er than the five years be­fore, stands out to me as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to em­ploy more peo­ple with the cap­i­tal that would be on the job site. And there­fore, that’s a good thing,” he ex­plained.