Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Re­spond­ing to in­creduli­ty sur­round­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s growth pro­jec­tions for the T&T econ­o­my, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Allyson West has main­tained that the fore­casts men­tioned by Im­bert in his mid-year re­view are rea­son­able.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view on CNC3’s Busi­ness Show on Wednes­day night, West said: “In look­ing at what was promised by the pub­lic sec­tor and the pri­vate sec­tor, in terms of what we pro­pose to do to start stim­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my and judg­ing the im­pact that that should have on the econ­o­my, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and his team­—the pro­jec­tion that they came up with was rea­son­able.”

Im­bert re­cent­ly said, based on the coun­try’s fis­cal stim­u­lus pro­gramme, a de­cline in GDP in 2020 of just 2.4 per cent is pro­ject­ed, re­bound­ing to growth of 4.7 per cent in 2021, with a con­tin­u­ing in­fla­tion rate of one per cent or less.

Econ­o­mists and the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce hot­ly con­test­ed these fig­ures.

Mean­while, West, who is al­so the Vice-Chair of the Roadmap Com­mit­tee, not­ed that the gov­ern­ment in com­ing up with the pre­dic­tion looked at where T&T is and the coun­try’s plans for the im­me­di­ate, medi­um and long term.

She high­light­ed that the same way the Prime Min­ster went about co­or­di­nat­ing and man­ag­ing the health re­sponse to COVID-19 - it is the very same way the com­mit­tee is seek­ing to man­age, un­der his guid­ance, the eco­nom­ic re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic.

West con­tend­ed that the ini­tial re­port is­sued by the Road map Com­mit­tee, was re­strict­ed to con­trol­ling the im­pact of the virus, deal­ing with the most vul­ner­a­ble and get­ting the econ­o­my re-opened as ear­ly as pos­si­ble.

She con­tin­ued: “Phase 2 is where we re­al­ly get in­to the meat of what we are about, which is, “How do we stim­u­late the econ­o­my to get it not on­ly back on track, but in an ad­vanced stage of de­vel­op­ment so that we re­bound quick­ly from the COVID de­cline and we come out with a more ro­bust and dy­nam­ic econ­o­my?”

When asked about the coun­try’s growth prospects in light low­er op­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty by firms, the cur­rent­ly low com­mod­i­ty prices and T&T’s lack of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust, West high­light­ed that the en­er­gy sec­tor was al­ways cat­e­go­rized as es­sen­tial, and con­tin­ued with its work.

West re­vealed that T&T is very for­tu­nate, be­cause when it spoke to the en­er­gy sec­tor at the be­gin­ning of this cri­sis, most of them as­sured the coun­try that they were go­ing to con­tin­ue with the pro­grammes that they have com­mit­ted.

This comes at a time where through­out the rest of the world, multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies were cur­tail­ing their in­vest­ment pro­grammes. West said the “pro­jec­tions that we have for pro­duc­tion for en­er­gy prod­ucts has not been re­al­ly im­pact­ed that much.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, since a new agree­ment has been de­cid­ed up­on by the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Pe­tro­le­um Ex­port­ing Coun­ties (OPEC) to scale back pro­duc­tion af­ter the price war be­tween Sau­di and Rus­sia.

West said that OPEC mem­bers have been keep­ing with their com­mit­ments “and be­cause of that we have seen pos­i­tive move­ment in the price from where it is in March to where it is now and we ex­pect that com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue.”

The Vice-Chair of the Roadmap said that the com­mit­tee ex­pects to present the next re­port to the pub­lic by the end of this month.