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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Hosein: Govt needs benefit of the doubt

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
36 days ago
20250617
Economist Professor Roger Hosein

Economist Professor Roger Hosein

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein says pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tions are need­ed to pro­pel the econ­o­my.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day on The Morn­ing Brew, Ho­sein said the pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tion would iden­ti­fy three vari­ables, which are im­prov­ing non-en­er­gy ex­port rev­enues, the non-en­er­gy fis­cal bal­ance, and low­er­ing crime.

The econ­o­mist not­ed that the gov­ern­ment has on­ly been in place for the past sev­en weeks and he said he does not be­lieve they have had enough time to get their act to­geth­er in terms of pulling the num­bers for the var­i­ous min­istries.

 “You are hear­ing all kinds of hor­ren­dous sto­ries about mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­port. I think they will need a full pic­ture to plan.  I don’t think any­thing con­crete will re­al­ly come out in the mid-year re­view bud­get to­mor­row, un­til the Oc­to­ber bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. And I’m pre­pared to wait and give them the ben­e­fit of the doubt be­cause, from what I know, this coun­try is in a very ter­ri­ble po­si­tion,” the econ­o­mist lament­ed.

Fur­ther, he said this coun­try is among the sev­en worst in the world in terms of re­al Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) growth from 2015 to 2024.  

“The da­ta is there for the world to see. So, I just hope they analyse the facts cor­rect­ly and thor­ough­ly, put all the da­ta to­geth­er, and do not hide it from the pub­lic. Then try to deal with it in a thor­ough, com­pre­hen­sive man­ner to im­prove the non-en­er­gy fis­cal bal­ance, non-en­er­gy ex­port rev­enues, and low­er crime,” Ho­sein ex­plained.

He in­di­cat­ed that he sees a tremen­dous role for the bank­ing sec­tor in this.

Ho­sein said he has been rais­ing this with the bank­ing sec­tor, and they seem in­ter­est­ed now in sup­port­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing the low-hang­ing fruit for for­eign ex­change.

An­oth­er is­sue he raised was that this coun­try nev­er paid at­ten­tion to re­mit­tances and did not pay at­ten­tion to tourism in the way that the Ja­maicans do. That has come back to haunt this coun­try.

 “When we say to save the en­er­gy rev­enues and gen­er­ate more non-en­er­gy ex­port rev­enues to run the econ­o­my, and the politi­cians don’t take it se­ri­ous­ly, well to­day the econ­o­my has crashed. The on­ly way to solve this prob­lem mov­ing for­ward is to fo­cus on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. We hear about Drag­on, drag­on, that’s good, we take the drag­on gas, no dis­put­ing that, we go for deep wa­ter gas, no dis­put­ing that. But those are things that will last us 10, 15 years,” said.

Ho­sein ex­plained that T&T needs a bailout in tourism, re­mit­tances, and non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing, as well as ex­port ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing ser­vice ex­ports. These are the ar­eas that will pro­vide more long-term, sus­tain­able for­eign ex­change in­flows.


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