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| Port Of Spain, Trinidad |
Trinidad and Tobago Central Bank has confirmed an energy-led recovery in domestic economic activity in T&T's first half of fiscal year 2018/19. The bank's June monetary policy announcement noted that government’s deficit for the first half of the 2018/2019 fiscal year was much lower when compared to the corresponding period last fiscal year.
Their announcement states “The boost to natural gas output from the Juniper project positively affected downstream production of petrochemicals and liquid natural gas (LNG). At the same time, toward the end of the year, refining output fell substantially as a result of the closure of the Petrotrin refinery.
“There were also maintenance-related production stoppages at some petrochemical plants in the final quarter of 2018,” the report said.
It added that more recent information shows that natural gas production rose further in the first two months of 2019 with the coming on-stream of new gas from the Angelin platform.
“LNG and petrochemicals output also increased while crude oil production continued to decline owing to mature acreage.
“The spillover from the energy to the non-energy sectors appeared to be slow and somewhat uneven in 2018, however, based on available data,” the report said.
Energy prices displayed positive trends over November 2018 to May 2019.
According to the Central Bank strong seasonal demand over the winter months accounted for the rise in natural gas prices (7.5per cent year-on-year) to US$3.16/million British Thermal Units (mmbtu) over the period.
The bank said latest data indicated an increase in the unemployment rate in the twin island Republic to 4.8 per cent in 2017 even as the labour market participation rate also declined as some people opted to leave the job market, perhaps as a result of difficulty in obtaining employment.
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