GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar
@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mist Roger Ho­sein is urg­ing cau­tion as Gov­ern­ment moves to ac­cess an es­ti­mat­ed $3 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing, warn­ing that while the re­quest could sup­port jobs and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, its long-term val­ue will de­pend on how ef­fec­tive­ly the funds are used and whether en­er­gy rev­enues ma­te­ri­alise as ex­pect­ed.

Speak­ing on The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ho­sein sug­gest­ed that pol­i­cy­mak­ers may be count­ing on an uptick in en­er­gy earn­ings dri­ven by re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions.

“I sus­pect they are ex­pect­ing a bonus on the en­er­gy sec­tor side by now,” he said, point­ing to ris­ing glob­al un­cer­tain­ty. “Some of what they are prob­a­bly go­ing to ask for would be ex­tra mon­ey that came in via the en­er­gy side.”

That an­tic­i­pat­ed wind­fall, he not­ed, could give Gov­ern­ment room to meet spend­ing com­mit­ments and ad­dress on­go­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sures.

How­ev­er, the econ­o­mist made it clear that re­ly­ing sole­ly on short-term gains would not be enough to sta­bilise the coun­try’s fis­cal po­si­tion or jus­ti­fy ex­pand­ing ex­pen­di­ture.

Cen­tral to the Gov­ern­ment’s nar­ra­tive is the promise of job cre­ation, a goal Ho­sein wel­comed cau­tious­ly. “If the Prime Min­is­ter is say­ing… the $3 bil­lion or so that they are go­ing back for will help to boost jobs, that’s great news,” he said. But he warned that the type of em­ploy­ment gen­er­at­ed will be crit­i­cal.

“We don’t want KFC jobs on­ly. We don’t want CEPEP-like jobs on­ly. We want long-term sus­tain­able jobs.”

Ho­sein point­ed out that the labour mar­ket has re­mained sur­pris­ing­ly re­silient de­spite eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, not­ing that da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) shows em­ploy­ment lev­els in 2025 held steady com­pared to 2024.

“That is some good news,” he said, not­ing he had ex­pect­ed a sharp con­trac­tion, po­ten­tial­ly as high as 15,000 job loss­es. In­stead, work­ers were re­de­ployed across sec­tors in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing and self-em­ploy­ment.

“The labour mar­ket, it’s hold­ing its head. We now need to get it to im­prove,” he added, stress­ing that any fis­cal in­jec­tion must trans­late in­to last­ing eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion rather than tem­po­rary re­lief.

For Ho­sein, the re­al test lies be­yond the im­me­di­ate bud­get cy­cle. He ar­gued that T&T’s long-term eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty hinges on di­ver­si­fy­ing away from en­er­gy de­pen­dence and ex­pand­ing non-en­er­gy ex­ports, point­ing to the Min­istry of Trade’s tar­get of in­creas­ing non-en­er­gy ex­ports by US$5 bil­lion as a crit­i­cal bench­mark.

“That is the rock on which this coun­try must be built,” he said, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that ear­ly da­ta shows ex­ports have de­clined, high­light­ing the scale of the chal­lenge ahead.

“If this work chan­nels in­to long-term sus­tain­able jobs…this coun­try will pros­per,” Ho­sein added, warn­ing that fail­ure to achieve those tar­gets would leave the econ­o­my vul­ner­a­ble, even with new en­er­gy projects com­ing on stream.

As pol­i­cy­mak­ers de­bate fis­cal strat­e­gy, Ho­sein al­so is­sued a di­rect mes­sage to house­holds grap­pling with high­er prices and stag­nant in­comes. “My ad­vice to them is to cool it,” he said.

He urged con­sumers to ad­just their spend­ing habits in re­sponse to ris­ing food costs and tighter eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

“Mod­er­ate your ex­pen­di­ture out­lay. So if it is you are go­ing to the gro­cery and the prices of chick­en, the price of fish, the price of beef has in­creased, mod­i­fy your con­sump­tion port­fo­lio for the short run so you could sur­vive,” he ex­plained.

Draw­ing from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence, Ho­sein said house­holds should be will­ing to sub­sti­tute to­ward more af­ford­able op­tions. “Even in my house…whilst I was build­ing my house, I would switch from chick­en breast to chick­en foot, chick­en neck, chick­en back. In­stead of eat­ing cur­ry king fish, I would some­times eat some less pricey fish,” he said.

He framed that ad­just­ment as nec­es­sary giv­en the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty. “We are about 16 per cent poor­er than we were in 2015, so you don’t ex­pect to have the same con­sump­tion habit,” he not­ed, warn­ing that this could push house­holds in­to debt.

“So be prac­ti­cal. Be wise. Change your ex­pen­di­ture out­lay,” Ho­sein ad­vised, adding that cit­i­zens should “ral­ly un­til 2027” when in­creased gas pro­duc­tion and high­er rev­enues are ex­pect­ed to ease eco­nom­ic pres­sures.