GEISHA ALON­ZO

While Gov­ern­ment has kept the “ship of state steady” thus far, se­nior econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon says to ac­cess much need­ed in­come, more ef­fort must be made in col­lect­ing out­stand­ing monies. He said the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion had help in re­main­ing afloat, pri­mar­i­ly due to the in­creas­es in the prices of oil and nat­ur­al gas.

“I think there are some pos­i­tive signs in re­spect of the en­er­gy sec­tor first­ly and more im­me­di­ate in re­spect of nat­ur­al gas and then in terms of the pos­si­bil­i­ty for oil,” he said.

In­fla­tion re­mained rel­a­tive­ly low and most still had their jobs, notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges with re­spect to Petrotrin and prob­lems fac­ing some oth­er com­pa­nies, Ramkissoon not­ed. How­ev­er, he said, there are still some ma­jor hur­dles for Gov­ern­ment to over­come.

“There are ma­jor chal­lenges be­fore us hav­ing to do with re­pay­ment of the na­tion­al debt, in­creas­ing debt ser­vice pay­ments that we have to make, the con­tin­u­ing chal­lenges with the ex­change rate and in sourc­ing ex­change rates es­pe­cial­ly for in­vest­ments,” he said.

Ramkissoon said that al­though the fis­cal deficit is like­ly to de­cline this year, the coun­try still faces “an­oth­er year or years of fis­cal deficits” and so­cial chal­lenges with crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty per­sist.

“The bud­get then is re­al­ly a short term mea­sure in the con­text of what should be a medi­um and long term plan and the bud­get must be seen as that. Re­al­ly it’s the fis­cal bal­anc­ing that is tak­ing place which would cause us to ad­dress those prob­lems.

“That is what the bud­get must frontal­ly tar­get. It must not on­ly seek to an­swer how are we go­ing to get over this year and how we are go­ing to get over the next year but it must lo­cate all the mea­sures in the con­text of a longer term frame­work which spans at least five years, oth­er­wise we will not be fac­ing the ma­jor chal­lenges fac­ing this econ­o­my,” Ramkissoon said.

He said ad­di­tion­al tax­a­tion is a pos­si­bil­i­ty but the more im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion must be col­lect­ing tax­es al­ready owed.

“Gov­ern­ment must col­lect the tax­es which it ad­mits it has not been col­lect­ing. It has moved slow­ly in re­spect of the re­forms that are nec­es­sary.

“Col­lect first what is owed be­fore you think about adding new tax­es to the sys­tem,” he ad­vised.