By SEAN DOUGLAS Sunday, September 5 2010

BUSINESSMAN Gregory Aboud hopes Minister of Finance, Winston Dookeran, will reverse the previous government’s actions of pushing out the private sector to the economic sidelines, he told Newsday days before next Wednesday’s National Budget presentation.

Newsday had asked the president of the Downtown Owners and Merchants’ Association (DOMA) to say what is the current state of the economy and what if anything should Mr Dookeran do to improve it. Aboud replied, “Currently the big picture is that the Trinidad and Tobago’s economy is in stagnation. We are poised between a period of potential growth and a period of potential recession. We are not in recession yet, but we have come from a period of great excess in which the economy was grossly overheated by excessive fiscal spending.

“We have arrived at this place of stagnation because investors were generally pushed to the sidelines because they were unable to compete with the Government’s spending.”

Aboud said that while the economy is now totally stagnant, it is not a hopeless situation. “This period contrasts significantly with the 1980s in that most of the private sector remains strong, not threatened yet by financial failure and not in danger of default or receivership.”

So, what should Mr Dookeran do on Wednesday?

Aboud said, “Mr Dookeran’s task is formidable, and in fact Mr Dookeran seems to be one of the few economists with the credentials necessary to ‘wake up’ the Caribbean sleeping giant that is Trinidad and Tobago.

“Mr Dookeran is trusted, and I believe he must trust the capacity for enterprise which is innate in all of our citizens. Mr Dookeran’s task, in my respectful view, is to get the Trinidad and Tobago investment community to alight from the back-seat of the economic vehicle, and to begin again the efficient allocation of resources in plant expansion, new businesses and new construction projects.”

Aboud hoped Dookeran would reverse the ills of the former regime.

“It is my view that having been forced off the ‘dance-floor’ over the past several years, that the business community, the investment community and private citizens can be encouraged to come back centre-stage where they belong, if Mr Dookeran enunciates a sensible role for the Government in agriculture, national security, infrastructure, education and healthcare.”

Aboud spelt out the private-sector’s role. “The Government doesn’t know if to build a hotel, but the private sector knows if it should be three-star, four-star or five-star, or whether it should be built at all.” He said the reason for the private sector’s acute insight is that it was their own private money that was being risked in business ventures.