Opinion
- Editorial- Commentary
Express Editorial
:
Sound move on economy
After months of puzzling denial, the Government has at last conceded that there is indeed cause for concern about the potential impact of the world financial crisis on the Trinidad and Tobago economy.
It is, to say the least, better late than never. The country by and large kept rightfully refusing to accept that the local economy, as the Government kept insisting, was so insulated from world connectivity, that there was no cause for alarm.
Overly bullish on the point, a trait which is quickly emerging as part of his essential character, the Minister in the Ministry of Finance Mariano Browne, was more provocative. He suggested a few weeks ago that people in the economic and financial elite were panicking because they had investments abroad and they felt exposed. He said further, it was they who, by their public expression of fear and trembling, were causing needless jitters among the population.
To its credit, a wisened public did not allow itself to be lulled into the kind of false security the Government by its pronouncements seemed to be encouraging.
Gradually, however, it had to be brought kicking and screaming into the position in which, just before she left on the last mission to Dubai, the Finance Minister herself three weeks ago began to concede the inevitable.
The Government would take the steps necessary, she said, to make whatever adjustments would be required. She at least hinted at what those might be.
Over the last few days, the Minister of Energy also disclosed that all ministries had been put on alert to make adjustments in the case of a prolonged or a significant slump in international prices.
Then during a function last Friday night, he said the Prime Minister was going to make an announcement this week on just how the Budget would be adjusted in these changed circumstances.
Here again, the signal is a more than welcome, crystal clear one. How far removed it is from the earlier stubbornness that the Budget's peg against oil prices,whether it was $70 or not, was not the real thing, that the international price of gas was where the action is.
With oil prices having begun to plummet almost immediately the Budget was announced, and now residing closer to $60 a barrel, the Government's late hour rhetorical adjustment is a step in the right direction, even now.
Of critical importance at this juncture also, are the pronouncements expected in the release this morning of the latest Monetary Policy Report by the Governor of the Central Bank.
With public opinion on his side for much of the last five years, but with the Government openly defiant in the face of his repeated warnings and cautions, Governor Williams's hands appear to have been enormously strengthened by the confluence of the international financial and economic storm clouds.
But for the moment at least, the Government's approach seems headed finally in the direction expected by the rest of the population.
Trinidad Express is one of the Trinidad's daily newspapers. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
This
commentary was originally published by Trinidad Express, Monday,
Monday, November 17th 2008
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News 11/17/08
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