Wednesday, May 06, 2009Trinidad Says No To IMF Loan

Oscar RamjeetTrinidad Finance Minister Says Economy Strong, No Need For IMF Loan

Trinidad and Tobago Finance Minister, Karen Nunez-Tesheira, has expressed her confidence that her country does not need to access any funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) due to its relatively strong position in spite of the international financial crisis.

The Trinidad Express reported that Nunez-Tesheira, who had been out of the country from April 24-29 attending meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, said she was sure that Prime Minister Patrick Manning did not describe the impact on the local economy of the international financial crisis as a "merely blip on the road to progress of our country on which we have embarked".

Manning had, in fact, used the very phrase while addressing the prime ministerial breakfast event in Port of Spain last month.

"I think what the prime minister alluded to is what every country alluded, is that the economies of the world must turn around... and it's a cycle. You know you go through troughs and you go through peaks. Certainly, this is a through unprecedented in recent history," Nunez-Tesheira said at a news conference.

She said that the IMF and the World Bank dealt with the international financial crisis at length, as she noted that Trinidad finds itself in what she called "the happy circumstance" because of the way the government has managed the economy, having "all our macroeconomic fundamentals to be very strong".

"All of those indicators are very strong, so Trinidad and Tobago would not qualify for that kind of funding support,” Nunez-Tesheira said.

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