The Op­po­si­tion be­lieves T&T cit­i­zens and Venezue­lans both stand to “feel the crunch” fol­low­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts’ views on lack of eco­nom­ic growth and pos­si­ble de­val­u­a­tion of the dol­lar as well as fol­low­ing an ad hoc Venezue­lan amnesty plan by Gov­ern­ment.

This view was con­firmed by UNC MPs Dr Bhoe Tewarie and Rod­ney Charles, who spoke on Sun­day at Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, re­spec­tive­ly about the eco­nom­ic is­sues and the amnesty. They frowned heav­i­ly on Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach re­gard­ing each.

“Every­body - every­body will suf­fer,” Tewarie replied on the ef­fects of both sit­u­a­tions.

“And signs of Venezue­lans are most preva­lent in South,” Charles added.

“One in every 10 peo­ple are Venezue­lans. Many youths are seek­ing jobs. You see many women in bars and young men out­side bars now... those fun­ny places like Vil­la Capri, etc. You see women at Mon­ey­gram send­ing mon­ey home,” the MP said.

Tewarie said Venezue­lans have al­so been work­ing at car wash­es and man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness­es in his con­stituen­cy. He, how­ev­er, voiced strong con­cerns about T&T’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion fol­low­ing re­cent re­ports from the World Bank, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and Fitch So­lu­tions - all of which panned T&T’s econ­o­my and dol­lar.

Tewarie added, “The World Bank says T&T’s econ­o­my was not do­ing well and prospects go­ing for­ward aren’t promis­ing. The IMF record­ed growth for 2018 as 0.3 and pro­ject­ed no growth for 2019. This is in stark con­trast to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s claims of high­er growth rates. This means the econ­o­my is do­ing much worse than thought de­spite sig­nif­i­cant boost in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion. The as­sess­ments make it clear there’s lit­tle or no con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween the nat­ur­al gas econ­o­my and the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

“Most dis­con­cert­ing of all is Fitch So­lu­tions’ out­look that de­val­u­a­tion is in­evitable, it can­not be staved off by con­tin­u­ing Cen­tral Bank in­ter­ven­tions and that over-val­u­a­tion of T&T’s dol­lar is a dis­in­cen­tive to in­vest­ment, its af­fect­ing busi­ness con­fi­dence, and has cre­at­ed a black mar­ket,” he said.

“Cen­tral Bank’s June 2018 and Jan­u­ary 2019 re­ports make it clear Cen­tral Bank’s Gov­er­nor is do­ing his diplo­mat­ic best to avoid em­bar­rass­ing the Min­is­ter who’s con­sis­tent­ly made ex­ag­ger­at­ed claims of eco­nom­ic progress which are con­tra­dict­ed by facts, num­bers and cit­i­zens’ ex­pe­ri­ence,” Tewarie added.

Tewarie not­ed the T&T dol­lar’s black mar­ket val­ue is $7-$8.

“The Min­is­ter’s state­ment that there’ll be no de­val­u­a­tion in 2019, gives no con­fi­dence. Rather, it cre­ates ten­sions, fu­els spec­u­la­tion and will prob­a­bly ac­cel­er­ate hoard­ing and cap­i­tal flight,” he added.

“End re­sult of all this is cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es feel rud­der­less, di­rec­tion-less and un­man­aged. In­se­cure and in search of hope. Youths are bad­ly af­fect­ed, many in their 20s have grad­u­at­ed and are un­able to find a job. There’s silent but per­sis­tent brain drain of the young and tal­ent­ed,” he said.

Giv­en the IMF’s re­port of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, and if T&T’s econ­o­my can on­ly ab­sorb 20,000 low end work­ers, Charles said any prop­er­ly planned amnesty should recog­nise T&T’s dilem­ma.

“How, for in­stance, will the 5,000 work­ers dis­missed from Petrotrin, feel?” he asked.

He not­ed Ger­many with 80 mil­lion cit­i­zens col­lapsed un­der the strain of one mil­lion Syr­i­an refugees. He said T&T cit­i­zens were al­ready taxed by the health sec­tor, yet it will al­so have to cater for un­known ad­di­tion­al Venezue­lans.

Not­ing the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s con­cerns about the plan, T&T’s mur­der rate and re­ports of some Venezue­lan in­volve­ment in crime, Charles asked, “What are the de­tails of plans to weed out crim­i­nals among those seek­ing amnesty?”

“Have teach­ers been in­formed how to deal with Venezue­lan chil­dren’s lan­guage is­sues? What cit­i­zen­ship rights will be af­ford­ed to ba­bies born lo­cal­ly? What’s in place to deal with Venezue­lans who ‘bolt’ to T&T to ‘catch ‘ the amnesty? What are Gov­ern­ment’s plans be­yond one year? And why can’t Cari­com cit­i­zens re­ceive a sim­i­lar amnesty,” he asked.

Op­po­si­tion awaits mid-year re­view—Tewarie

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s up­com­ing mid-year re­view must tell the pub­lic his views on the World Bank and IMF’s neg­a­tive re­ports on T&T.

Tewarie said he was very in­ter­est­ed to see if Im­bert would deal with the in­ter­na­tion­al as­sess­ments on the econ­o­my in next month’s mid-year Bud­get re­view.

“I don’t know if he’ll quar­rel with them, con­tra­dict their num­bers or deem them wrong. I’m await­ing his po­si­tion.”

“But as far as the world’s con­cerned, I think the World Bank’s re­port will be tak­en as fac­tu­al as­sess­ment, the IMF re­port will be tak­en sim­i­lar­ly and the Fitch re­port will be seen as in­formed, in­tel­li­gent re­port on the state of T&T’s econ­o­my. This par­tic­u­lar­ly would be of val­ue for po­ten­tial in­vestors and re­gard­ing in­stru­ments of in­vest­ment of­fered in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” he said.

He said if noth­ing changes eco­nom­i­cal­ly, T&T would have four to five months im­port cov­er on­ly. But Tewarie said de­val­u­a­tion wasn’t a panacea. He said cer­tain pol­i­cy de­ci­sions were need­ed to put T&T back on track.”

Tewarie said the UNC’s Man­i­festo Com­mit­tees are prepar­ing agen­das and clear plans, “to ar­rest the de­cline, be­gin the re­cov­ery process, stim­u­late the econ­o­my by pub­lic and pub­lic/pri­vate in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, friend­ly poli­cies to stim­u­late lo­cal, for­eign and lo­cal/ for­eign part­ner­ships for in­vest­ment and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

“We’re al­so fo­cused on the econ­o­my, less en­er­gy de­pen­dence, re­new­able in­dus­tries and a re­new­able econ­o­my and a fourth in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven in­no­va­tion econ­o­my in every in­dus­try from agri­cul­ture to com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy, and every­thing in be­tween.”