For a na­tion brac­ing for eco­nom­ic pain, brought about large­ly by COVID-19, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had some en­cour­ag­ing news when he pre­sent­ed the Mid-Term Bud­get Re­view yes­ter­day. In a nut­shell, T&T has weath­ered the storm and is in a good fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

To be clear, the coun­try was al­ready in some chop­py eco­nom­ic wa­ters, the re­sult of a 50 per cent de­cline in nat­ur­al gas prices and col­lapse in oil prices. Then came the pan­dem­ic and a halt to all non-es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties as pub­lic health re­stric­tions were en­forced to safe­guard against spread of the virus.

COVID-19 was the re­cur­ring theme through­out Mr Im­bert’s pre­sen­ta­tion, which in­clud­ed de­tails of ex­pen­di­ture on a range of re­lief mea­sures to cush­ion the worst of the pan­dem­ic.

But while it is true that, so far, the coun­try has es­caped cat­a­stroph­ic pub­lic health and eco­nom­ic out­comes, Mr Im­bert’s op­ti­mistic stance might be pre­ma­ture. The world is not rid of COVID-19, a cure has not yet been found and ex­pect­ed new waves of the pan­dem­ic could once again halt eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Like so much in this strange new era of lock­downs and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, un­cer­tain­ty is the on­ly thing that is cer­tain in the months ahead.

One of the few facts that can be gleaned from cur­rent eco­nom­ic pro­jec­tions is that T&T now sits as a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, a small play­er in a glob­al econ­o­my ex­pect­ed to con­tract by three per cent this year.

Even worse, the fore­cast is for a glob­al re­ces­sion that is shap­ing up to be worse than the 2009 glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis.

This year, T&T will suf­fer a 2.4 per cent de­cline in GDP. To­tal rev­enue is down by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $9.200 bil­lion, main­ly due to low­er than ex­pect­ed oil and gas prices. As a re­sult, the coun­try is sad­dled with a deficit of $14.533 bil­lion—8.8 per cent of GDP.

While, to a cer­tain de­gree, T&T has dodged some re­al­ly bad out­comes, the worst is not yet over, so there will be a need for a lot more of the fis­cal pru­dence Min­is­ter Im­bert reg­u­lar­ly refers to in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions.

Aus­ter­i­ty might be a dirty word for a gov­ern­ment just months away from a gen­er­al elec­tion but it is a con­se­quence that can on­ly be avoid­ed if, in bud­getary mea­sures for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture, care is tak­en with ex­pen­di­ture.

The same de­gree of ex­treme cau­tion ob­served with the re­sump­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties in re­cent weeks will have to be fol­lowed in man­ag­ing the econ­o­my.

As much as pos­si­ble, draw­downs of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) must be avoid­ed. Great care should al­so be tak­en in ac­cess­ing the fund­ing avail­able from mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the low-cost fund­ing rapid fi­nanc­ing in­stru­ments made avail­able by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

The one thing that needs to be ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sued is the de­vel­op­ment of those sec­tors of the econ­o­my al­ready iden­ti­fied as pil­lars of the long-over­due di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion that will break decades of de­pen­dence on our en­er­gy in­dus­try.

This is nec­es­sary to en­sure T&T sur­vives fu­ture eco­nom­ic storms.