Bartlett says businesses grinding to a halt

“We are very concerned about the slowing of businesses in the whole country but more so in the City of San Fernando,” Bartlett said, adding, “I can tell you today that business is extremely slow and many of the business owners are saying that we do not need to open on a Saturday.” “That does not auger well for any country when a business wants to close an additional day,” she said.

“We all know that business drives the economy and if things are slowing to the point where you do not want to do business again or you are losing business owners because they cannot ply their trade or business is so slow, I think the government needs to sit down with a team of economists and good financial advisors and plan for the country and see what can be done,” she said.

She also called for a reduction of national expenditure from its present position of $53 billion to between $49 to $47 billion dollars.

Bartlett was addressing a business seminar at the Canton Palace restaurant, Cross Crossing Shopping Centre, San Fernando on Saturday night. She said business owners are also concerned about the escalating crime rate as peope are afraid to leave their homes and patronise those businesses which opened at night.

“Crime is a big problem, people are not leaving their homes as they used to and when they don’t leave their homes and they don’t go and participate in things that are happening, that also is grinding things to a halt and you do not want that in your country,” she said.

Meanwhile, UWI economist Dr Roger Hosein agreed that expenditure has to be sliced to approximately $45 billion saying the economy was in need of change and observed that one suggestion was the devaluation of the TT dollar.

He urged the population to support the implementation of the property tax.

“We need to find novel ways to help increase the non-energy sector, export revenues and we need to find ways to reduce the burden on the private sector which is the engine of any society,” he said.

He too agreed that the runaway crime rate was an obstacle to growth in the economy as investors were wary of investing in a volatile environment.