As the debates continue on the fate of Trinidad and Tobago during the global economic crisis, financial analyst Indera Sagewan-Alli has warned that while there are some positive signs, things are still "not looking too good" for the country.
Sagewan-Alli has said that the country can either waste time debating semantics or it can face reality and prepare to expand its resources.
"We have to decide if we are going to proactively take measures to mitigate on a path to a good place," she said.
Sagewan-Alli was speaking last Wednesday at a seminar for credit union leaders, hosted by the Trinidad and Tobago Credit Union Stabilisation Fund at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Port of Spain.
Also on the presentation panel were economist Robert Mayers and vice president of the Public Services Association (PSA), Stephen Thomas.
While the global 'ship' is starting to float again, Sagewan-Alli said, and the rate of contraction has slowed down, T&T's gas-based economy can still expect to see some flat times.
"The price of oil is slowly increasing," Sagewan-Alli said, "But we have to remember that we are now mostly a gas-based economy and the price of gas is expected to remain the same."
She later pegged the low price of gas at $3 per mmbtu and cited an 18 per cent contraction in the energy exports.
"Prices are expected to remain flat up to 2010, 2011," she said. "So the picture is not rosy in the medium term."
With the world looking to China to be the major force in pulling it out of the crisis, she reminded the audience that China also relies on large countries like the US to add to its consumer base.
Still, there are positive indicators, she said, with China showing a 9.7 per cent growth for the first quarter of this year- nearly two per cent more than that country's economists had expected.
In the US, the consumer confidence index showed itself at 54.1, still falling short of the 90 that is considered a 'safe zone'.
"There has been a modest pick-up in business confidence and some stabilisation in consumer purchases," she said.
"The banks - the main perpetrators of the crisis - are starting to lend again and although jobs are still being lost, this is happening at a lesser rate and commodity prices are falling."
Locally, falling inflation and interest rates were attributed in part to contractions in most of this country's major sectors - energy and manufacturing among them - and she remarked that the Government must be careful about stimulating demand.
"This is one of the reasons that next budget presentation is so important," Sagewan-Alli said.
"The aim is for investment loan consumption and the Government must be careful to keep the focus on that. The Government itself is also a major inflator and must watch how it spends in the mid-term.
