Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Eight months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning called on cit­i­zens to tight­en their belts, he is now telling them that they can af­ford to re­lax.

"I would like to sug­gest to you that where­as we had called on you to tight­en your belts at the first sight of the down­turn in the Unit­ed States, I must now say the time has come for you to re­lease your belts," Man­ning said, as he re­ceived a thun­der­ous ap­plause from busi­ness­men at a break­fast meet­ing at Paria Suites Ho­tel, La Ro­maine. "We re­alised that when we called for belt-tight­en­ing cit­i­zens re­spond­ed; now you can re­lease the belt so you can breathe," the Prime Min­is­ter said. Re­it­er­at­ing that his Gov­ern­ment had promised cit­i­zens that the coun­try was not go­ing to head in­to a re­ces­sion, Man­ning said it was time to in­crease the lev­el of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Boast­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had en­sured that the coun­try had saved for a rainy day, Man­ning said the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund now stood at US$2.9 bil­lion and con­tin­ues to in­cur in­ter­est. "Where­as so many coun­tries around the world are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a short­age of cash, we have a sur­plus of cash that is now avail­able to utilise as we seek to in­crease the lev­el of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty," he said.

He re­vealed that two Fri­days ago, he met with some mem­bers of his Cab­i­net and called on them to de­vise a plan to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment was not on­ly em­bark­ing on a pro­gramme that would on­ly stim­u­late the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties, but en­sured that small and large con­trac­tors would not be af­fect­ed. In two weeks' time, Man­ning said, the Cab­i­net would meet and dis­cuss the var­i­ous pro­pos­als to en­sure that when the 2010 bud­get was pre­sent­ed in Sep­tem­ber, eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty would con­tin­ue and the econ­o­my was not al­lowed to slow down to the ex­tent that "we go in­to a re­ces­sion."

Man­ning al­so not­ed that while oil prices were pro­ject­ed to stay at $60 per bar­rel and gas at $4 per Mil­lion British Ther­mal Unit, there was need to ex­am­ine and make ap­pro­pri­ate ad­just­ments to stim­u­late in­vest­ments in the right di­rec­tions. In en­sur­ing the econ­o­my re­mained stim­u­lat­ed, Man­ning said a high-grade re­fin­ery was ex­pect­ed to be con­struct­ed with­in the next five to ten years. The re­fin­ery, Man­ning said, was ex­pect­ed to pro­duce both gas and oil. "I am very ex­cit­ed about the fu­ture of T&T. Call me an op­ti­mist...I see the fu­ture of T&T as bright," he said. Not want­i­ng to say too much on the con­tro­ver­sial alu­mini­um smelter plant to be con­struct­ed in La Brea, Man­ning said con­struc­tion would not stop.

He said the Cer­tifi­cate of Clear­ance was be­ing re­viewed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and was con­fi­dent the re­sults would meet the stan­dard need­ed to con­struct the smelter. Mean­while, Man­ning al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present top Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment stu­dents Danielle Sie­u­nar­ine and Jemi­la Forde with a plaque each, con­grat­u­lat­ing them on their achieve­ments.