Caribbean L 8 ife, July 19–25, 2019 BQ
CARIBBEAN ROUNDUP
the future of the country’s economy is
promising.
St. Lucia
St. Lucia will this month be launching
initiatives aimed at minimizing the
dependence on singleuse
plastics, including
Styrofoam, with the
option of applying habits
at home and in a daily
life and sharing with friends and family.
At the start of the year, the Allen
Chastanet administration announced
plans to phase-out the use of Styrofoam
and selected single-use plastic food
service containers in the local food
service industry.
In August last year, the authorities
placed a ban on the importation of
these items as well as a ban on the use,
manufacturing, sale and distribution of
items.
In support of this, Parliament passed
the Styrofoam and Plastic Food Service
Containers (Prohibition) Act on June 11.
The government said that during
July the Department of Sustainable
Development will undertake several
initiatives dubbed “Plastic Free July.”
The government said this is an
international campaign designed
to increase awareness of the amount
of plastic by encouraging people to
significantly reduce the use of single-use
plastics for one month.
Trinidad
Global credit agency, Standard &
Poors (S&P has downgraded Trinidad
and Tobago from BBB+ to BBB, saying
that the outlook is stable.
In its update on T&T, S&P said the
decision to downgrade the country was
based on lower-than-expected energy
production and economic growth which
it expects to weaken the
Government’s revenue
base and delay its plans
to balance the budget by
fiscal year 2020-2021.
S&P added: “Action and improve
the provision of timely economic data
have taken longer than expected and
we do not expected to see material
dividends from these reforms in the
near future.”
It said these factors weaken the
country’s resilience against external
shocks.
“As a result, we are lowering our
long-term and local currency, sovereign
credit ratings on Trinidad and Tobago to
‘BBB’ from ‘BBB+ and are affirming our
short-term foreign and local currency
sovereign credit ratings at ‘A-2’,” the S&P
outlook read.
It also added that it was revisiting down
its transfer and convertibility assessment
to ‘BBB+’ from ‘A’.
— Compiled by Azad Ali
Continued from Page 4
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