(Trinidad Express) The economic situation in Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the Caribbean remains very fragile and suspect to external shocks, Minister of Finance Winston Dookeran has told an international audience of finance experts.
Dookeran gave an address, along with the Indian and Israeli finance ministers and the president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, at the inaugural session of a major international conference, the Delhi Economics Conclave, in New Delhi, India on December 15.
This was hosted by the Indian Finance Ministry, the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, the Confederation of Indian Industries, the Delhi School of Economics and the Indian Statistical Institute.
His address, titled: “A New Leadership Challenge” was given to an audience at the conference, on Economic Policies for Emerging Economies, which included a broad cross section of about 700 international trade and industry representatives, economists, academics and financial experts.
Dookeran said the Caribbean has always lived with external shocks.
“Trinidad and Tobago does have immense impact on the small Caribbean economies. Trinidad and Tobago has been able to retain a solid macro-economic performance, the debt to GDP ratio is just over 36 per cent of our GDP. The relationship between reserves, international reserves and GDP is very high despite fiscal deficits. Substantial reserves in the stabilisation fund have allowed the country to escape some of the problems in the first round.”
With regard to the impact of the global financial crisis, he said the Caribbean was neither isolated nor insulated. “While some have argued that the Caribbean countries are innocent bystanders in this whole phenomenon, this is not so. We do indeed live in a world that is very interconnected, and when Lehman Brothers fell in New York, so too the largest insurance company in the Caribbean, (CLICO) located in Trinidad and Tobago, almost collapsed. This affected over ten per cent of the gross domestic product of Trinidad and Tobago. In the Caribbean it affected over 17 per cent of the gross domestic product,” he said.
