Trinidad and To­ba­go is not in­clud­ed among the Caribbean na­tions analysed by the World Bank Group in its Glob­al Growth Prospects re­port, which was pub­lished yes­ter­day.

The 220-page doc­u­ment, which is con­sid­ered to be a flag­ship re­port of the World Bank Group, analy­ses the growth prospects of re­gions around the world, in­clud­ing the 14 na­tions in the Caribbean.

Those na­tions are: An­tigua and Bar­bu­da; The Ba­hamas; Bar­ba­dos; Be­lize Do­mini­ca, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Grena­da, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Suri­name.

But there is no men­tion of T&T. The coun­try is al­so ex­clud­ed from the larg­er list of 28 coun­tries that con­sti­tute the Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­gion (LAC).

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the Min­istry of Fi­nance sim­ply does not sup­ply the World Bank with the re­quired da­ta.

The World Bank es­ti­mates that the 14 Caribbean na­tions ex­am­ined grew by 4.8 per cent in ag­gre­gate in 2023 and fore­casts the coun­tries will grow by 7.1 per cent in 2024 and 5.7 per cent in 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, "Growth in the Caribbean economies will ac­cel­er­ate to 7.1 per cent in 2024 and re­main ro­bust at 5.7 per cent in 2025.

"Even ex­clud­ing Guyana, which con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence a re­source-based boom af­ter the dis­cov­ery of oil in 2015, the sub-re­gion’s growth is ex­pect­ed to pick up to 3.9 in 2024 and 4 per­cent in 2025," states the World Bank re­port.

"But prospects con­tin­ue to di­verge in the sub­re­gion. The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is fore­cast to grow by an av­er­age of 5.1 per cent in 2024-25, amid struc­tur­al

re­forms to at­tract for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.

Growth in Ja­maica, how­ev­er, is ex­pect­ed to weak­en to 2 per cent in 2024 and 1.6 per cent in 2025 be­cause of sub­dued pri­vate con­sump­tion growth.

"Eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion in Haiti is en­vis­aged to con­tin­ue this year be­cause of chron­ic vi­o­lence and po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty.

"Tourism in the sub­re­gion has re­cov­ered close to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els and should con­tin­ue to sup­port eco­nom­ic growth, though more mod­er­ate­ly than in 2023," the re­port stat­ed,

The World Bank states that fis­cal po­si­tions in the Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean have be­come more pre­car­i­ous due to high­er lev­els of debt, in­creas­ing in­ter­est rates,

and the prospects of slow­er growth.

"While fis­cal deficits in most LAC economies have nar­rowed since the pan­dem­ic, they re­main sub­stan­tial. If mar­kets were to per­ceive these fis­cal po­si­tions as

un­sus­tain­able, risk ap­petite for LAC gov­ern­ment bonds could de­cline ma­te­ri­al­ly, forc­ing more abrupt fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tions than as­sumed in the base­line," ac­cord­ing to the Glob­al Growth Prospects re­port.

In de­liv­er­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view last Fri­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert said the orig­i­nal 2024 bud­get pre­dict­ed a $5.19 bil­lion deficit, amount­ing to 2.6 per cent of T&T's gross do­mes­tic prod­uct.

Giv­en a de­crease in rev­enue, and the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of a sup­ple­men­tal $2.3 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture, Im­bert said the deficit could be as high as $9 bil­lion. He said the Min­istry of Fi­nance will try to con­trol ex­pen­di­ture to pre­vent the $9 bil­lion deficit from oc­cur­ing.