GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Do­mes­ti­cal­ly, eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty will be but­tressed by the sta­bil­i­sa­tion of en­er­gy sec­tor out­put and mod­est ex­pan­sion of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor over the short to medi­um-term.

This from the Cen­tral Bank’s mon­e­tary pol­i­cy re­port which was re­leased yes­ter­day.

The Bank al­so stat­ed that im­prove­ments in en­er­gy sec­tor pro­duc­tion ob­served dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2024 are an­tic­i­pat­ed to spillover in­to 2025.

It said nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is pro­ject­ed to im­prove fol­low­ing the start up of bpTT’s Cypre field in April 2025, adding that pro­duc­tion would al­so ex­pe­ri­ence upticks from EOG’s Men­to field.

In the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, prospects for pub­lic sec­tor wage set­tle­ments could un­der­pin busi­ness and con­sumer op­ti­mism, the Bank out­lined, stat­ing that con­tin­ued cred­it ex­pan­sion along­side im­prove­ments in sev­er­al sup­ple­men­tal in­di­ca­tors of non-en­er­gy sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty, such as cash­less pay­ments, sug­gest ag­gre­gate de­mand may re­main buoy­ant.

Fur­ther, the Bank stat­ed that labour mar­ket con­di­tions are like­ly to sta­bilise fol­low­ing an in­crease in the un­em­ploy­ment rate in 2024.

“Em­ploy­ment growth is ex­pect­ed in a few sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly the com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial, and per­son­al ser­vices sec­tor and con­struc­tion (in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter) sec­tors,” the bank said.

Mean­while, it not­ed that head­line in­fla­tion is ex­pect­ed to in­crease in the short term giv­en chal­lenges on the in­ter­na­tion­al trade front.

Dur­ing the third quar­ter of 2024, the bank not­ed that over­all eco­nom­ic growth was bol­stered by an ex­pan­sion in en­er­gy sec­tor pro­duc­tion.

This, it said, rep­re­sent­ed the first yearon-year im­prove­ment in the sec­tor’s out­put in near­ly two years, adding that growth con­di­tions were fur­ther sup­port­ed by im­proved non-en­er­gy sec­tor out­put.

In­di­ca­tors mon­i­tored by the Cen­tral Bank al­so sug­gest­ed that the pos­i­tive per­for­mance of the en­er­gy sec­tor ex­tend­ed in­to the fourth quar­ter of 2024 and was com­ple­ment­ed by im­proved ac­tiv­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

Based on da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), the bank not­ed re­al GDP im­proved by 2.0 per cent (year-on-year) in the third quar­ter of 2024. This, it said, re­flect­ed im­prove­ments in both the en­er­gy and nonen­er­gy sec­tors (2.1 per cent and 1.9 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly).

En­er­gy sec­tor in­creas­es were broad-based as high­er out­put was record­ed for sev­er­al com­modi­ties, prompt­ing im­proved per­for­mances across sev­er­al sub-sec­tors.

The bank added that eco­nom­ic con­di­tions con­tin­ued to im­prove in the fourth quar­ter of 2024, stat­ing that en­er­gy sec­tor out­put was bol­stered by height­ened pro­duc­tion among up­stream par­tic­i­pants.

Non-en­er­gy sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty im­proved in the fourth quar­ter of 2024, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates from the Cen­tral Bank’s Quar­ter­ly In­dex of Re­al Eco­nom­ic Ac­tiv­i­ty (QIEA).