by Marla Dukharan (originally published November 8, 2022) Almost on a daily basis I am referred to as ‘boomer’ by my children, both of whom are teenagers with the now typical preference for tech-enabled life, which was probably inevitable but no doubt accelerated by the pandemic. And for dinosaurs like…

by Marla Dukharan (originally published September 25, 2022) The recent “Spotlight on the Economy” highlighted many important economic developments and data, and I thank and congratulate the Gov’t of T&T for this effort. But this exercise also revealed inconsistencies and unnecessary untruths. “Our credit rating is improving. Our revenue is…

by Marla Dukharan (originally published August 16, 2022) Barbados is emerging from one of the most difficult periods in its history. Following a decade of economic mismanagement that led to a balance of payments crisis in 2018, Barbados has survived the most comprehensive debt restructure known to man, a pandemic…

by Marla Dukharan (originally published June 22, 2022) The Cayman Islands economy is driven mainly by the financial services sector and tourism, with the construction sector having the largest economic multiplier. The population of the Cayman Islands varies somewhat and reached roughly 70K pre-pandemic, with a GDP/capita close to USD90K…

by Marla Dukharan (originally published April 24, 2022) The IMF is expecting global growth to slow from 6.1% in 2021 to 3.6% in 2022–23 and 3.3% over the medium-term. Note that global growth below 3% is considered a global recession, and already the IMF shaved 0.8 and 0.2 percentage points…

Remarks delivered by Marla Dukharan on December 13th 2022 at the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Raymond and Pierre Co. Ltd. in Trinidad. Most people would not have any reason to know the following equation, which shows how the size of a country’s economy (also known as its Gross…

Late last year the USA, EU, and OECD convinced 136 countries (except Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) to agree to implement a 15% Global Minimum Tax. In a world where countries are encouraged to improve their statistical infrastructure in order to support evidence-based policymaking, there appears to be no…

Moody’s downgraded the Government of T&T to Ba1 (non-investment grade / ‘junk’) over four years ago (long before COVID) on April 25, 2017. S&P downgraded the Government of T&T to BBB in 2019 and BBB- (one notch above ‘junk’) in 2020. In July 2021, S&P put its BBB- rating on…

by Marla Dukharan Imagine you gained independence only 40 years ago from France and the UK, you are the world’s most vulnerable country to natural disasters, you are ranked as the 30th poorest globally (right after Haiti), you are one of the world’s smallest physically (83 islands are collectively slightly…