Khamal Georges

Lead Ed­i­tor, News­gath­er­ing

khamal.georges@cnc3.co.tt

With the last two years de­fined by a crip­pling pan­dem­ic, harsh re­stric­tions, eco­nom­ic down­turn and job loss, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is giv­ing some hope for the new year, telling cit­i­zens 2022 will be bet­ter.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has me­an­dered through re­stric­tions over al­most two years in an at­tempt to con­trol the ebb and flows of COVID-19 cas­es – busi­ness­es were closed, move­ment re­strict­ed and a State of Emer­gency im­ple­ment­ed among the mea­sures adopt­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, with the coun­try fac­ing an un­prece­dent­ed surge due to the Delta strain as it brings the year to a close, Dr Row­ley ex­pressed some op­ti­mism on the eco­nom­ic side head­ing in­to 2022.

“What we can look for­ward to in 2022, I think, is some con­sid­er­able im­prove­ment,” he said when asked to give his out­look for the new year.

“We ex­pect some con­sid­er­able im­prove­ment as long as we are able to keep the econ­o­my op­er­at­ing. What I don’t want us to have to do is throt­tle the econ­o­my again.”

As he re­flect­ed on the past year, he said it was a “dif­fi­cult” one and while he was hope­ful the coun­try would have dug its way out of the pan­dem­ic, the re­al­i­ty con­fronting the Gov­ern­ment and the coun­try is much dif­fer­ent.

“For­tu­nate­ly, it’s not been worse, it could have been worse. It has not been worse than it is, but it has not been good,” he not­ed

In the past few months, the Prime Min­is­ter said sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the econ­o­my have been re­opened and, more im­por­tant­ly, the Gov­ern­ment has no plans of re­turn­ing to fur­ther lock­downs. How­ev­er, he says health ex­perts who ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures have se­ri­ous con­cerns about open­ing the econ­o­my even fur­ther. Thank­ful­ly, he said, the econ­o­my is no longer in a pe­ri­od of sta­sis.

“Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, as long as we are not beat­en down by the virus in 2022, our econ­o­my should im­prove,” the PM added.

Dr Row­ley men­tioned the “good” progress be­ing made in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and ser­vice sec­tors. His hope is that To­ba­go’s econ­o­my will be kick­start­ed, jok­ing “maybe with a dip in the wa­ter very soon.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, his pref­er­ence would be for To­ba­go to serve as an ex­am­ple of what can be done once vac­ci­na­tion num­bers are up, since its pop­u­la­tion is sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er.

“Be­cause To­ba­go is a unit, a small unit, we should be able to have a lev­el of vac­ci­na­tion in To­ba­go that will al­low the is­land to have its econ­o­my func­tion­ing in a way that the stress­es of the virus can be, if not elim­i­nat­ed, sig­nif­i­cant­ly ame­lio­rat­ed,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley non-com­mi­tal on run for 3rd term

Could Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley run for a third term as Prime Min­is­ter? It’s an an­swer he’s keep­ing close to his chest al­though he hint­ed that this would be his fi­nal term when he gave his vic­to­ry speech fol­low­ing the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Fol­low­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s de­feat at the THA elec­tion last Mon­day (De­cem­ber 6), Guardian Me­dia asked whether this would be his fi­nal THA elec­tion as the PNM po­lit­i­cal leader.

Back in Au­gust af­ter a gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry last year, Row­ley told PNM sup­port­ers “this can eas­i­ly be my last term in pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I am not one of those politi­cians who be­lieve that when you come in­to of­fice, you should go out feet first. I have places to go and peo­ple to see.”

When asked if that po­si­tion still stood over the week­end, Dr Row­ley said, “I don’t know.”

Ac­cord­ing to him, he is not one who claims to be able to see around the cor­ner but is in­stead fo­cused on his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing T&T’s af­fairs.

Asked again if the po­si­tion still stands, Row­ley said: “When I have some­thing to tell you about that I will let you know.

“I usu­al­ly en­sure that I do not have to dis­own any po­si­tion that I have tak­en, but it’s dif­fi­cult to take the fu­ture on board some­times. No­body knew we would spend two years in a pan­dem­ic. I don’t know how much longer this is go­ing to go.”