Venezuelan migrants could cost Trinidad $620M per year

(Trinidad Guardian) The Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor has es­ti­mat­ed that it will cost the state around $620 mil­lion dol­lars a year to sup­port the Venezue­lans who have mi­grat­ed to this coun­try.

Dr Alvin Hi­laire said at first he was skep­ti­cal about that fig­ure but then said af­ter look­ing at the im­pact on Colom­bia, that 600-odd mil­lion-dol­lar fig­ure seemed plau­si­ble.

Colom­bia has so far tak­en in al­most 1.2 mil­lion Venezue­lan mi­grants and refugees. This has cost that coun­try around 0.4% of its GDP.

The South Amer­i­can coun­try has had to seek fi­nan­cial aid to sup­port the Venezue­lans with the World Bank re­cent­ly giv­ing them a grant of around $US31.5 mil­lion.

Dr Hi­laire be­lieves this is some­thing this coun­try may need to ex­plore.

“There has been set up in the In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, a fa­cil­i­ty of around $US100 mil­lion, we should be able to ac­cess that giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of our sit­u­a­tion.”

Dr Hi­laire said sev­er­al sec­tors will al­so be im­pact­ed.

“The labour mar­ket sure­ly, the hous­ing mar­ket, so­cial ser­vices and then you have na­tion­al in­sur­ance, health and se­cu­ri­ty”.

But the Cen­tral Bank be­lieves there are pos­i­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the labour mar­ket, once the Venezue­lans here are is­sued the work per­mit ex­emp­tions.

“The eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits could be any­thing where hu­mans move and bring any­thing with them, they bring their skills, they bring their ap­proach to things, so there could po­ten­tial­ly be large ben­e­fits over time, and they can con­tribute to tax­es but not in the im­me­di­ate fund.”