Nadaleen Singh

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran is fore­cast­ing 1.5 per cent growth for the T&T econ­o­my this year–up from the re­vised es­ti­mate of 0.8 per cent for 2014. He said that pro­jec­tion is based on the bank's analy­sis which shows a strength­en­ing of the econ­o­my.

"We ex­pect the en­er­gy sec­tor to grow about one per cent, this is ac­tu­al­ly a turn around from a con­trac­tion of 1.7 per cent that was ex­pe­ri­enced in 2014. This is ac­tu­al­ly the best per­for­mance of the en­er­gy sec­tor," he said yes­ter­day when he ad­dressed a break­fast meet­ing of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce at its Colum­bus Cir­cle, West­moor­ings, head­quar­ters.Ram­bar­ran said the non-en­er­gy sec­tor was pro­ject­ed to grow two per cent this year based on "con­ser­v­a­tive as­sump­tions."

How­ev­er, his op­ti­mistic eco­nom­ic fore­casts were de­scribed as "a bit strange" by Cham­ber CEO Cather­ine Ku­mar."Of course we al­so have to recog­nise that this is an elec­tion year and in an elec­tion year there is great ex­pen­di­ture–ex­pen­di­ture by all the par­ties–and while this is not pro­duc­tive ex­pen­di­ture, that is not the kind of ex­pen­di­ture that we'd like to see, it just adds to the GDP of the coun­try and there­fore we may see growth but is it a growth that we can sus­tain?" she asked.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent Mooni­lal Lalchan, who is al­so vice-pres­i­dent, Fi­nance and Ad­min­is­tra­tion at At­lantic, com­ment­ing on the im­pact of falling oil prices, said there were no plans to cut ex­pen­di­ture at the com­pa­ny."We are buck­ling down for the long-haul and we are very con­fi­dent that we will ride out this phase. From an At­lantic point of view, we have all con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my that it will con­tin­ue to grow," he said.

Ku­mar: CAL loss­es wor­ri­some

Speak­ing to Guardian af­ter the meet­ing about CAL's fi­nan­cial po­si­tion, Ku­mar said the air­line's US$60 mil­lion loss­es were a sig­nif­i­cant draw on the Trea­sury."If you look at rev­enue over the num­ber of em­ploy­ees, it is not where it should be at all. There is a lot of in­ter­nal work to be done with CAL. The de­clin­ing oil prices are go­ing to help the air­line since they will have fu­el at a low­er cost. It (the prob­lem CAL faces) is in­ter­nal. It is at the man­age­ment lev­el, the board lev­el," she said.

Ku­mar as won­dered about the si­lence from CAL CEO Michael DiLol­lo's on the air­line's poor per­for­mance."I sup­pose it's a sit­u­a­tion where, be­ing not from T&T, he's prob­a­bly tak­ing the time to un­der­stand the or­gan­i­sa­tion bet­ter so when he comes out to speak, he is speak­ing from un­der­stand­ing what is hap­pen­ing in the or­gan­i­sa­tion," she said.Ku­mar said DiLol­lo has to say "what he is go­ing to do dif­fer­ent­ly from what the pre­vi­ous per­son did" to turn around the air­line.