SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has dev­as­tat­ed our ef­forts in the tourism mar­ket, cre­at­ing a $15 bil­lion hole which is like­ly to im­pact the coun­try’s up­com­ing bud­get con­sid­er­ably.

A fur­ther fall out of the pan­dem­ic, Row­ley said: “We are on the verge of hav­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al la­bel at To­ba­go’s Mag­dale­na that is now in lim­bo and even Car­ni­val, more than like­ly will be a ca­su­al­ty.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is ex­pect­ed to present the na­tion­al bud­get in the com­ing weeks.

Row­ley said the coun­try has seen some dark times in the past which we bat­tled.

One in­stance, he said, was in 2015 when his Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice and dis­cov­ered in­suf­fi­cient funds in the na­tion­al trea­sury and col­laps­ing rev­enues, but was able to find cre­ative ways “to keep the lights on,” promis­ing the Gov­ern­ment will plan and ex­e­cute as they have been do­ing.

“This time, 2020, is one such chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od,” Row­ley point­ed out. Row­ley in his first In­de­pen­dence Day ad­dress to the na­tion last night af­ter be­ing re-elect­ed spoke at length about the virus which has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed economies world­wide.

“We all ex­pect this pan­dem­ic will pass, even­tu­al­ly, but our fu­ture and for­tunes can­not be just tied to the pass­ing of Covid-19. It must be built on us grow­ing, on our sow­ing and build­ing, on us thriv­ing in new busi­ness­es and in new ways while we make our na­tion­al re­cov­ery and pas­sage through these dif­fi­cult times, no mat­ter how long they last.”

Stress­ing that T&T was no dif­fer­ent from any oth­er in the world––from the rich­est to the poor­est where there is a lim­it­ed amount of hos­pi­tal beds and ven­ti­la­tors, a lim­it­ed num­ber of doc­tors, nurs­es and per­son­al pro­tec­tion equip­ment––the PM said, “We have so far held among the best in the world on the man­age­ment of Covid.

“As the virus pro­gress­es through its nat­ur­al cy­cle to­day, we and 146 oth­er coun­tries are fight­ing com­mu­ni­ty spread.”

The PM said now was not the time for fun, frol­ic and brava­do which would in­vite un­speak­able dis­as­ter.

He said T&T, like the rest of the world “may yet feel its full fe­ro­cious­ness and we still have no idea when it is go­ing to end. If we do not do this with dili­gence and sus­tained so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, our med­ical sys­tem will be over­whelmed, with the po­ten­tial of a col­lapse, pos­ing then fur­ther dis­as­ters for us all.”