Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has alluded to T&T’s grim economic situation as members of the Economic Advisory Board were handed their instruments of appointment at the Office of the Prime Minister, St Clair, yesterday.
The board, which Rowley said would play an important process in the national management system, is also expected to make short and long-term recommendations regarding the country’s economic plan.
“This exercise comes at a time when our resource base is shrinking. We have borrowed significant amounts of money which we have already used up and we are borrowing more to continue to maintain some aspects of the lifestyle that we have become accustom to and we also have to borrow to keep the economy growing.
“That against the background of the revenues of 2015 being considerable less and as I speak now I have seen the price of oil at less than $40 a barrel,” Rowley said.
He said there was now a requirement to move the country’s “conversation and behaviour” away from the price of a barrel of oil.
After decades of being in politics, the PM said, one of the biggest mistakes was to leave all the answers in the hands of the politicians, since they may not understand that management of the country did not begin and end in the political arena.
“What I have done is to look to the wider national community to see who can make the kinds of contributions as the circumstances require.
“The current circumstances are very swift and the water is very shallow so we need to begin not a day too late on what we do with what is available to us.
“As a small country with a fair amount of resources and a considerable amount of investment made in an earlier time... if we make the current decisions or the best decisions available to us then we give ourselves the best chance of overcoming the challenges we face,” Rowley said.
If a poll was to be taken across the country, he said, it would show great dissatisfaction with the outcome of how certain things were being done.
In using the public sector as an example the PM said: “Everybody knows that we have grown a huge State enterprise sector at great cost to the taxpayers. The question is are we satisfied with the outcome of that sector?
“We are not without foreign exchange revenues coming into this country but are we handling it and managing it properly? No, because if you ask anybody they will tell you they cannot get US currency,” Rowley added.
On the issue of education and health he said there were sectors where a lot of money has also been spent but there were also areas of dissatisfaction.
“The general national feeling is that the negatives seem always to be in the forefront which is telling us that all is not going well,” Rowley said
On the outcome from the board, he said the Government, whose responsibility it was for making decisions, how resources were distributed and handled and how investments were met, would rely on advice from citizens.
“It is a decision-making we hope that would be based on facts and data and which will push our universities to generate that kind of data from the research that they will conduct,” Rowley added.
He assured that recommendations from the board would not be shelved but rather be publically available.
“Therefore when decision are made everybody in the country will know the basis on which the decisions are made and the cynicism that now washes the country regarding ulterior motives and hidden agendas will begin to dissipate,” Rowley added.
FAILING BY UNIVERSITIES
Rowley, who bemoaned the lack of research conducted by university students, said:
“If there is one failing in the university environment in this country is that we have moved from an area of excellence to an area where people are telling you about their requirement of promotion, based on how many letters they wrote to in the papers as against serious research and serious issues which would allow decision-makers in the country to make decisions based on data.
“Many of our young people should be involved in research projects.”
Saying there were three universities which had taxpayers’ funding, Rowley also urged those who ran the universities to ensure young people conducted research projects.