“We are not pes­simistic on the lo­cal econ­o­my, as we are not yet out of op­tions.”

This was the state­ment made by RBC In­vest­ment Man­age­ment (Caribbean) Ltd as it looked back on the year since the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

RBC In­vest­ment Man­age­ment (Caribbean) said the past year was a “chal­leng­ing” one.

“In par­tic­u­lar for Q2, from a mar­ket per­spec­tive, we saw de­clines in all fi­nan­cial as­sets,” it stat­ed in an ad­ver­to­r­i­al pub­lished in yes­ter­day’s Busi­ness Guardian mag­a­zine.

The Roytrin Funds, how­ev­er, said it cap­i­talised on the Q2 tur­moil and this strat­e­gy paid off.

“The trough to peak re­cov­ery in the S&P 500 dur­ing 2020 was a whop­ping 63 per cent and so to the ex­tent that we bought on this pull­back, the re­turn of the Funds were en­hanced rel­a­tive to the over­all mar­ket,” it stat­ed.

RBC said it an­tic­i­pates mar­kets will sway be­tween “hopes for an even­tu­al re­cov­ery from the pan­dem­ic and the sober­ing short-term re­al­i­ty of the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment.”

RBC said the T&T econ­o­my re­mains chal­lenged with neg­a­tive growth record­ed for three out of the past five years be­tween 2015 to 2019.

“We be­lieve this is the op­por­tune time for gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to re-eval­u­ate their busi­ness mod­els. The old mod­els that were heav­i­ly re­liant on the sup­ply of US dol­lars from the en­er­gy in­dus­try will not work as well go­ing for­ward,” it stat­ed.

RBC said this may be the time to start de­vel­op­ing new busi­ness­es fo­cused on in­creas­ing self-re­liance. With sur­plus liq­uid­i­ty re­main­ing high, RBC said there is am­ple room to bor­row lo­cal cur­ren­cy with­out in­creas­ing in­fla­tion.

“This does not mean in­fla­tion will not in­crease- but if it does, it will not be due to in­creased bor­row­ings in lo­cal cur­ren­cy, but rather due to short­ages of US dol­lars and oth­er fac­tors re­lat­ed to the dis­rup­tions in sup­ply chains brought on by the pan­dem­ic,” it stat­ed.

RBC said this ef­fec­tive­ly buys T&T some time to get the right projects go­ing.

“To the ex­tent that these projects get off the ground and are tar­get­ed at re­duc­ing im­ports, in­creas­ing ex­ports, then T&T will start to see some re­cov­ery over the up­com­ing years,” it stat­ed.