I will touch upon the issue of the “Dutch Disease” phenomena and how to deal with it, later in my presentation. The microeconomic aspects are as important as the macroeconomic ones, to achieve a balanced non-inflationary growth. The first and most important one is, to ensure that the Government is not competing with the Private Sector for limited productive resources and capacities.
Such competition will only result in price increases, increase in imported inputs, including materials, equipment and labour, and misallocation of the limited resources resulting in losses to the nation. Therefore, my recommendation is that during the LNG construction period the Government should refrain from undertaking major infrastructure projects.