Labour Minister Rennie Dumas confers with Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira, during yesterday’s post-Cabinet press conference, at Whitehall, Queen’s Park West, St Clair.Photo: Shirley Bahadur

By Raphael John-Lall

Information Minister, Neil Parsanal, said yesterday that there is nothing to be frightened about in the loss of T&T’s access to the General System of Preferences (GSP) programme.

Parsanal made the comment in response to a question at yesterday’s post-Cabinet press Conference at White Hall, Queen’s Park West, St Clair.

“The statement is not as frightening as you make it to be. It’s far from frightening. The US$7 billion dollars of export that we have with the US, it is merely US$5.1 million that is going to be affected by this and that works out to be .001 per cent of our exports, so it’s not as frightening as (it is) being made out to be,” Parsanal said.

Parsanlal was referring to action by US President George W Bush, who on Monday ordered the termination of T&T’s access to the preferential trade programme effective January 1, 2010. He took the action on the grounds that T&T had become a “high income” country and no longer eligible to make use of the GSP.

Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira added that the decision to end T&T’s access to the programme is reflective of the country’s strong economy.

“The reasoning behind it is that Trinidad and Tobago is considered to be a high level economy. All T&T’s macro-economic indicators are excellent. In determining whether you give protection it will be determined by the strength of your economy so what it’s really saying to you is that Trinidad’s economy is not just the fact that we have oil and gas. There are other countries that have oil and gas that are not in the position that our economy is in. It’s not a punch or a blow. I don’t even know if it is a dent,” she said.

In response to a reporter’s question, Nunez-Tesheira said a bi-lateral free trade agreement with the US is something to be considered.

She said: “We have excellent trading arrangements with the US,” adding that T&T supplies 70 per cent of the US’ liquefied natural gas (LNG) needs.