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Saturday, March 15, 2025

PM Rowley sees brighter 2022

by

Khamal Georges
1189 days ago
20211212
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley during an interview with Guardian Media  at the Prime Minister’s residence in Tobago over the weekend.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley during an interview with Guardian Media at the Prime Minister’s residence in Tobago over the weekend.

KYRSTLE JAMES

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.”


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