Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­open the econ­o­my quick­ly to pre­vent an “eco­nom­ic col­lapse.”

“What do we do with the econ­o­my? It seems as if it is on the verge of col­lapse. I do not think that the au­thor­i­ties are read­ing the da­ta prop­er­ly. We have vac­cines and some peo­ple are al­ready vac­ci­nat­ed. Half of the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States is al­ready vac­ci­nat­ed. It is busi­ness that dri­ves the econ­o­my. When you lock it down peo­ple are un­em­ployed and then they can­not earn,” she said on Fri­day night at a vir­tu­al sem­i­nar on the sta­tus of T&T’s econ­o­my host­ed by the Trade and Eco­nom­ic Unit of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

She ex­plained how the COVID-19 re­stric­tions and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing busi­ness slow­down are af­fect­ing or­di­nary con­sumers.

“Half a pound of flour is be­ing sold. Al­so, a half-pound of rice. Peo­ple are cut­ting a mar­garine in half and sell­ing it. That tells you that con­sumers’ pur­chas­ing pow­er is re­al­ly bad. It tells you that peo­ple are suf­fer­ing and you need to pro­vide em­ploy­ment for them. How to pre­vent this from fur­ther go­ing on is to re­open the econ­o­my?”

She said out­side of COVID-19, T&T’s pop­u­la­tion was very healthy as peo­ple now have bet­ter san­i­tary con­di­tions.

“Peo­ple are healthy and they are buy­ing their Vi­t­a­min C, and they are fol­low­ing all the things that they were taught to do and they are not get­ting in­fect­ed with in­fluen­za as this year is the low­est rate for that. I have a lot of cough and cold med­i­cine in my phar­ma­cy and we have to send it back as they have ex­pired and that has nev­er oc­curred. It shows that peo­ple are healthy. I am plead­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to stop lock­ing down every­thing and telling peo­ple to stay home.”

She al­so said one of the ad­verse ef­fects of lock­ing down the econ­o­my was the loss of jobs and from what she has ob­served, the un­em­ploy­ment rate is ris­ing.

She al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­open the bor­ders quick­ly to give life to the econ­o­my.

Econ­o­mist Patrick Wat­son who spoke at the fo­rum said the Gov­ern­ment has to be cre­ative in di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my and cre­at­ing new sec­tors to earn forex.

He said mar­i­jua­na was now a bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try and it is one sec­tor T&T can look at de­vel­op­ing as a cash earn­er.

Oth­er sec­tors he rec­om­mend­ed in­clude agro-pro­cess­ing, tourism, the cre­ative and cul­tur­al sec­tor, and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors.