"It is a sim­ple mat­ter for ivory tow­er econ­o­mists to pre­scribe bit­ter eco­nom­ic med­i­cine which would un­doubt­ed­ly in­flict deep suf­fer­ing on an ail­ing pop­u­la­tion be­cause most will nev­er have to look the pa­tient in the eye or swal­low their own jagged lit­tle pill." This was the state­ment made by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning on Sat­ur­day in re­sponse to re­cent com­ments by lo­cal econ­o­mists call­ing for the gov­ern­ment to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to cor­rect the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic prob­lems.

Man­ning said some of the rec­om­men­da­tions now be­ing float­ed are "ar­cha­ic, out­dat­ed, lack­ing con­text and should be dis­missed" be­cause they are dan­ger­ous and dam­ag­ing to the well-be­ing of the peo­ple of T&T.

In Thurs­day’s Busi­ness Guardian mag­a­zine one of the rec­om­men­da­tions made by econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rence Far­rell was a re­duc­tion in the head­count in the pub­lic ser­vice.

Man­ning said this move could force hun­dreds, or even thou­sands, of peo­ple "in­to an al­ready crowd­ed labour mar­ket with lit­tle hope of be­ing ab­sorbed by a wob­bled pri­vate sec­tor."

Man­ning said what Far­rell and the oth­ers are rec­om­mend­ing was rem­i­nis­cent of ac­tion tak­en by the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment in 1986 which failed then and to­day is con­sid­ered "out­dat­ed, un­car­ing and al­most cru­el eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy."

In­stead, Man­ning said the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment has em­barked on a strat­e­gy of in­vest­ment de­signed to re­struc­ture the T&T econ­o­my while pre­serv­ing lives and liveli­hoods.

"This is what peo­ple-cen­tred pol­i­cy is all about. We make no apolo­gies for that," Man­ning said.

"While these text­book rec­om­men­da­tions would im­prove our eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors they would al­so so se­vere­ly im­pugn the stan­dard of liv­ing for the av­er­age Trin­bag­on­ian that no one would care."

Man­ning said even the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), known for pro­mot­ing aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures, has made an about-face on this dra­con­ian eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy.

"A re­cent ar­ti­cle (Oc­to­ber 2020) pub­lished in the Fi­nan­cial Times ti­tled, ‘IMF says Aus­ter­i­ty is not In­evitable to Ease Pan­dem­ic Im­pact on Pub­lic Fi­nance’ has said as much. Mr Vi­tor Gas­par, head of fis­cal pol­i­cy at the IMF, stat­ed re­sound­ing­ly "most ad­vanced economies that can bor­row freely will not need to plan for aus­ter­i­ty to re­store the health of their pub­lic fi­nances af­ter the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic’," Man­ning said.

Man­ning said T&T re­mains an in­vest­ment-grade coun­try with a rel­a­tive­ly high cred­it rat­ing and this al­lows us con­tin­ued ac­cess to "cheap debt" on both the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

"While I re­spect Dr Far­rell’s ex­pe­ri­ence, I must re­ject these out­dat­ed eco­nom­ic rec­om­men­da­tions; these poli­cies of pain. There is no ques­tion that our econ­o­my is in a del­i­cate state, it re­quires a fun­da­men­tal re­struc­tur­ing and su­per­flu­ous spend­ing must be cut," Man­ning said.

"How­ev­er, in­stead of starv­ing this eco­nom­ic flu, as Dr Far­rell has sug­gest­ed, our gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to feed the pa­tient by in­vest­ing in our peo­ple and stim­u­lat­ing our econ­o­my," he said.

Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment was in­vest­ing in in­fra­struc­ture, hous­ing, digi­ti­sa­tion, skills and ed­u­ca­tion and im­prov­ing the coun­try’s ease of do­ing busi­ness to at­tract fur­ther for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment to cre­ate jobs and im­prove life for all.

"The pa­tient doesn’t have to die for the surgery to be a suc­cess," he said.