NADALEEN SINGH

De­spite Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Ewart Williams say­ing on Tues­day that while the T&T econ­o­my is nei­ther in re­ces­sion nor has it reached "cri­sis pro­por­tions," econ­o­mist Mary King said the coun­try's eco­nom­ic per­for­mance is on a down­ward slope.

"The Eco­nom­ics In­tel­li­gence Unit (EIU) is say­ing that we're on a down­ward slope and we could be head­ing in­to a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion be­cause our debt is ris­ing, our gas price is falling and Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to spend wild­ly," King said yes­ter­day. Her re­sponse was a re­ply to Williams' state­ments on Tues­day at a press con­fer­ence the Cen­tral Bank host­ed, at which he said the econ­o­my con­tin­ued to de­gen­er­ate rapid­ly in the first six months of 2009.

"I re­main un­con­vinced that the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my would meet the ac­cept­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion of re­ces­sion," Williams said. King said that Gov­ern­ment has been ad­vised for the past five years about the econ­o­my and that its spend­ing should be struc­tured and geared to­wards the build­ing of new as­sets and the build­ing of new sec­tors of the econ­o­my. "What the Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing is build­ing the same role mod­el, build­ing the smelter. They are al­so putting mon­ey in­to steel. All of these things are cer­tain­ly in a re­ces­sion. The prices are down and there is no fu­ture out­look in the short-term that these things are go­ing to turn up," King said.

The Unit­ed King­dom-based EIU, a mem­ber of the Econ­o­mist Group, in its April 2009 coun­try re­port on T&T, stat­ed that a se­vere down­turn in the econ­o­my and in­creas­ing­ly high lev­els of crime will plague T&T for the next two years. The re­port al­so stat­ed: "Gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) growth, which slowed to 3.5 per cent in 2008, will weak­en fur­ther in 2009 to 0.9 per cent as the glob­al re­ces­sion bites. A mild glob­al eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery will help to lift GDP growth to 1.9 per cent in 2010."

The Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions

David Ab­du­lah, pres­i­dent, Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun), be­lieves the sta­tis­tics which Williams spoke of at Tues­day's press con­fer­ence sug­gest there is a re­ces­sion in T&T. "The gov­er­nor, al­though he did not use the word re­ces­sion, did give enough in­for­ma­tion to con­firm in our view that the econ­o­my is in a state of re­ces­sion," Ab­du­lah said.

He said ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, food in­fla­tion and many oth­er fac­tors which Williams spoke of are in­di­ca­tors of an econ­o­my "in trou­ble." Ab­du­lah said the ma­jor is­sue for Fi­tun is how the re­sources of T&T are used. "If Gov­ern­ment had man­aged the re­sources wise­ly dur­ing the pe­ri­od of boom and con­tin­u­ing with its mega projects, we will not be do­ing any­thing to get us out of the dif­fi­cul­ty and we're sim­ply hop­ing for high oil and gas and oth­er com­mod­i­ty prices," he said.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce

Stephen Cadiz, pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber, said giv­en that T&T is an oil- and gas-based econ­o­my, once there is no ac­tiv­i­ty in the oil­fields, that is a def­i­nite sign that there is a prob­lem. "There's been no new drilling ac­tiv­i­ty or find of oil for near­ly two years. That alone should tell you that some­where down the road, you will run in­to prob­lems. The signs have been there. When the world econ­o­my went in­to re­ces­sion, T&T was say­ing it would nev­er hap­pen to us. We can't be sin­gu­lar, there­fore, once that hap­pens, Gov­ern­ment should have put things in place im­me­di­ate­ly," said Cadiz