Jun 2010 Financial News

Govt promises may be phased, says Dookeran

Jun 11, 2010

Finance Minister Winston Dookeran has said that T&T’s financial state would force the People’s Partnership government to engage in a “phased” introduction of its election manifesto promises for its first three months in office. “We are committed to complying with the election manifesto proposals. We anticipate that we may have to do a phased introduction of some of those proposals, depending on the state of the financial consolidation that we will work out,” Dookeran said.

He was speaking at yesterday’s post-Cabinet press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office, St Clair. He said that within Government’s first 120 days in office, it will meet those commitments the People’s Partnership outlined in its manifesto. “In some cases, we may have a phased introduction of such commitments over some time.”
Dookeran said the Government would be looking “very carefully” at establishing new funding sources for the Public Sector Investment Programme, in particular, to restore economic growth in T&T.

“This is the second year that we will have possible negative growth. The estimates are actually a one per cent possibility in 2009/2010, but the expectation may be less than that.” He said the main issue was “to change the direction” for T&T’s economic growth path. “We are looking at ways to bring the recurring expenditure and the recurring revenue in line with each other, that is our first priority,” Dookeran said. “The second item, of course, would be how we will find the necessary funds to finance the public sector investment programme.”

He said discussions were being held with the Inter-American Development Bank on concessional funding. He said another area to be addressed was the excess liquidity in the banking sector. “In light of the fact that we have had a non-energy deficit growing for some time, we intend to have discussions with the banking sector to redirect some of that liquidity into growth-producing activities in the country,” Dookeran said.


Source:
Kimberly Mackhan
Trinidad Guardian
Friday June 11, 2010

http://guardian.co.tt/business/business/2010/06/11/govt-promises-may-be-phased-says-dookeran