Are we really in for bad times? These are very abnormal times of a kind not witnessed in living memory, so whatever we have inherited as the acceptable norm in terms of the level of fiscal deficit for a country like ours should not be a constraint right now.
The major priority today is to get out of the present crisis afflicting the world economy, where our major markets are disappearing, which implies that the economic model that we have been applying is being redefined under our very noses. We should not be prisoners of outmoded ways of thinking whereby the fiscal deficit should stay around or less than 3%.