Tobago inflation rate at moderate levels

Joel Jack
Joel Jack

The inflation rate in Tobago continues to be held at moderate levels.

Deputy Chief Secretary and Secretary of Finance and the Economy Joel Jack made the revelation while speaking with Newsday at his Victor E Bruce Financial Complex office on Tuesday.

He said the latest data available from the Central Bank for February 2019 suggests the island recorded a headline inflation rate of 2.8 per cent, marginally higher than the 1.2 per cent headline inflation rate recorded at the national level.

He said the rate of food price inflation in February 2019 was about 1.7 per cent and the rate of core inflation on the island was about 2.9 per cent.

Further, he said the inflation rate in Tobago averaged 1.2 per cent for the 12-month period February 2018 to February 2019. Whilst the Inflation rate nationally averaged at 1.1 per cent.

“What our inflation numbers suggest is that notwithstanding the existing challenges on the air and sea bridges, inflation on the island has been kept to moderate levels,” he said.

Questioned on whether TT was out of the recession period, the secretary recalled that Minister of Finance Colm Imbert had alluded to that in his last budget presentation in October 2018.

However, Jack believes that “persons have not fully recognised the level of navigation and precision leadership that got the country through troubled waters from 2015 to today.

“We have weathered the storm, it could have been a lot worse, more severe, in-terms of some of the actions the Government could have taken to turn things around.”

On Tobago’s “economic health,” he said the Division of Finance and the Economy was continuing to monitor the situation through the computation of annual GDP estimates for Tobago.

The last estimates for 2017 suggested Tobago’s GDP in constant prices was approximately $1.82 billion and that over the five-year period 2012-2017 the average annual growth rate in Tobago’s real GDP was approximately three per cent.

In relation to the labour market conditions, he said, “Notwithstanding ongoing fiscal adjustments, both at the national level and at the level of the assembly, the latest data available from the CSO (end of fourth quarter 2017) with respect to the labour market suggest the unemployment rate in Tobago is below three per cent, relative to the 4.4 per cent rate recorded at the national level.”

Jack said there were approximately 31,000 people with jobs in Tobago in the fourth quarter of 2017 and approximately 18 per cent of the labour force in Tobago had tertiary education as their highest level of educational attainment, a figure marginally lower than the 22 per cent at the national level.

“The data also shows that in Tobago the State employs 61.1 per cent of the labour force, with the private sector employing 38.9 per cent, for the fourth quarter of 2017. For the same period, the national figure recorded for persons employed by the State was 26.2 per cent and 73.8 per cent for the private sector”.

The secretary had returned to TT on Monday, having accompanied the Minister of Finance as part of a delegation to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank annual meetings held in Washington. DC. last week.

Jack said among the issues addressed were preparations for the participation of the THA in the IMF Article IV Consultation Meeting for 2019 as well as an ongoing credit rating exercise by Moody’s.

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"Tobago inflation rate at moderate levels"

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