FISCAL RESILIENCE
The Keynesian approach to economic management assumes that higher fiscal spending stimulates growth. But in T&T, instead of running fiscal surpluses and saving energy windfalls, we continue to spend more, at times even incurring fiscal deficits and borrowing to spend when energy revenues are high. When energy prices decline, we are left with insufficient fiscal space or capacity to borrow and compensate for the attendant shortfall in energy derived fiscal revenues. But there is something we can do relatively quickly, to dampen the pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy and make it more counter cyclical…