The economy of Trinidad and Tobago is experiencing “robust” economic growth after a prolonged period of “sub-par” performance, the International Monetary Fund believes.
Oil exports had slowed recently due to the need to perform maintenance on facilities, the IMF reported last week. The maintenance contributed to 1.5 percent growth in the country’s gross domestic product in 2013, which is expected to rise to 2.6 percent in 2014. The rest of the economy is doing well also.
“The non-energy sector was fairly buoyant in 2013, which we anticipate will continue to be the case in 2014,” the IMF stated.
Previously, other economic observers criticised the country’s dependence on energy exports and urged diversification. Ewart Williams, the former governor of the Central Bank of T&T, said in a December 2011 speech that “external factors,” namely economic conditions in Europe and the United States, would highly impact T&T’s economic performance in 2012.
But the IMF stated that it anticipates foreign demand for energy to bolster growth, helping so much that it will likely cause the T&T government’s budget deficit in 2013/14 to be only 1.5 percent of GDP and not the 3.5 percent it originally envisioned.
See the April 10, 2014 edition for full coverage.
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