Sto­ries by AN­DREA PEREZ-SOBERS

Se­nior Re­porter - Busi­ness

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed yes­ter­day that, based on da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the un­em­ploy­ment rate in the coun­try de­creased—mark­ing an im­prove­ment in labour mar­ket con­di­tions for the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023.

The CSO in­di­cat­ed that the un­em­ploy­ment rate mea­sured 3.7 per cent in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023, low­er than the 4.5 per cent re­port­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter of 2022.

It not­ed that the low­er un­em­ploy­ment rate was re­flec­tive of an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple em­ployed, some 24,700 peo­ple (year-on-year), and a de­cline in the num­ber of un­em­ployed (by 3,900 peo­ple).

“As a re­sult, the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate mea­sured 56.2 per cent. Em­ploy­ment gains oc­curred in the con­struc­tion (in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter) (9,400 per­sons); Whole­sale, Re­tail, Restau­rants, and Ho­tels (7,700 per­sons); and Com­mu­ni­ty, So­cial, and Per­son­al Ser­vices (7,500 per­sons) sec­tors,” said the Cen­tral Bank in its quar­ter­ly Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment.

The re­port out­lined that food in­fla­tion de­cel­er­at­ed to 1.9 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2023 from 9.7 per cent in May 2023.

This was due to slow­er price move­ments in sev­er­al ma­jor cat­e­gories of food, in­clud­ing; veg­eta­bles (5.3 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2023 from 10.0 per cent in May 2023), fruits (6.8 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2023 from 7.3 per cent in May 2023) and sug­ar, jam, and con­fec­tionery (4.0 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2023 from 9.6 per cent in May 2023). These were re­spon­si­ble for the de­cel­er­a­tion in do­mes­tic food in­fla­tion.

The Cen­tral Bank re­port al­so stat­ed that as sev­er­al cat­e­gories of food with high im­port con­tent (breads and ce­re­als along with milk, cheese, and eggs) slowed in Oc­to­ber 2023 con­sis­tent with soft­er in­ter­na­tion­al food com­mod­i­ty prices, do­mes­tic food in­fla­tion nar­rowed. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, price de­clines were not­ed in the meat and fish sub­si­dies, un­der­pinned by an uptick in sup­ply, par­tic­u­lar­ly for fish.

As it per­tains to ex­ports the earn­ings dipped in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023 due to low­er en­er­gy prices.

More specif­i­cal­ly, ex­ports con­tract­ed by 45.3 per cent to US$2,541.0 mil­lion over the said pe­ri­od, pri­mar­i­ly due to a re­duc­tion in en­er­gy ex­ports un­der­pinned by low­er in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty prices.

En­er­gy ex­ports de­creased by 47.1 per cent to US$2,068.1 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od one year ear­li­er as a re­sult of low­er ex­port earn­ings from petro­chem­i­cals (56.1) per cent), gas (40.6 per cent), and pe­tro­le­um crude and re­fined prod­ucts (38.2 per cent).

“Com­pound­ing this po­si­tion was a de­cline in non-en­er­gy ex­ports which fell by 35.8 per cent (year-on-year) to US$472.9 mil­lion, re­flec­tive of low­er in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand for do­mes­tic prod­ucts,” the re­port said.

The Cen­tral Bank re­port said to­tal im­ports de­creased by 22.2 per cent (year-on-year) to US$1,667.5 mil­lion dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023 com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

“Over the ref­er­ence pe­ri­od, fu­el im­ports de­clined by 48.7 per cent, pri­mar­i­ly re­flect­ing low­er in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices. At the same time, non-fu­el im­ports fell by 12.0 per cent (US$186.4 mil­lion) to US$1,363.7 mil­lion, large­ly due to low­er im­ports of ma­chin­ery and trans­port equip­ment.”

Non-en­er­gy sec­tor

In­di­ca­tors mon­i­tored by the Cen­tral Bank sug­gest­ed that ac­tiv­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor re­mained pos­i­tive in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023.

No­tably, the es­ti­mates showed that the trans­porta­tion and stor­age sec­tor dis­played strong year-on-year ex­pan­sion over the pe­ri­od (16.5 per cent), sup­port­ed by an uptick in air trav­el, land and wa­ter trans­porta­tion.

Es­ti­mates al­so sug­gest­ed height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty in the whole­sale and re­tail trade (ex­clud­ing en­er­gy) sec­tor (4.0 per cent).

The re­port not­ed that these es­ti­mates were sup­port­ed by year-on-year growth (5.8 per cent) in the CSO’s In­dex of Re­tail Sales over the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023.