Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira must explain to the country how the economy fell into such a huge deficit at the end of the fiscal year 2008-2009, senior economist Jwala Rambaran has said.

Rambaran said he was also not convinced that the country could rebound from this deficit in just three years, as was being suggested by Nunez-Tesheira.

He was speaking at the joint meeting of the Rotary Club of Port of Spain’s 2009 post-budget debate at the Cascadia Hotel in St Ann’s yesterday. ’If we look at where we were in September last year, we were originally expected to have a balanced budget, revenues matching expenditure,’ Rambaran pointed out.

’By the time we reached into January this year after two adjustments were made, we were told that there will now be a deficit position of $1.2 billion and, to me, the great surprise is that by the time the numbers were finally in and the budget read, that deficit of $1.2 billion turned into an even larger deficit of $8.4 billion... My question is how, in the face of what has been described as a blip, did we manage to move from a balanced position all the way to a deficit of $8.4 billion?’

Rambaran gave the 2009/2010 Budget a thumbs-down, saying that, among other things, it fails to address the issue of diversification. He said the budget was a ’distressing example once again of wishful thinking countering reasoning and experience’.

He added, ’I think this administration seems to have discounted all the lessons from the past year and seems to be moving ahead in a business-as-usual manner.

’That, to me, sends the wrong message that we could still remain complacent against the backdrop of what is still likely to be a very difficult journey ahead, not only for the world economy, but for the economy on which we rely a lot, which is the United States.’