Faced with falling glob­al en­er­gy prices, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she will ad­dress the na­tion on the state of the econ­o­my and the im­pli­ca­tions of falling oil and gas prices next week.She al­so urged the na­tion not to pan­ic, say­ing there will be no job cuts or re­moval of so­cial sub­si­dies in the new year.The Prime Min­is­ter said so in her New Year's Day ad­dress yes­ter­day dur­ing the gov­ern­ment's fi­nal post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence for the year at the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal.

She added: "I wish to give the as­sur­ance that there will be no cut to af­fect the vul­ner­a­ble and the un­der-priv­i­leged as well as health sec­tor re­form and crime fight­ing."The preser­va­tion of jobs is high on our agen­da," Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sured. She added all so­cial pro­grammes which as­sist­ed the poor and vul­ner­a­ble would con­tin­ue.Say­ing she planned to meet with busi­ness groups and oth­er stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the im­pli­ca­tions of the falling en­er­gy prices, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added:

"I look for­ward with keen in­ter­est to the ideas and sug­ges­tions which the stake­hold­ers and cit­i­zens will share as we deep­en our part­ner­ship in the in­ter­est of a pros­per­ous and se­cure T&T.The Prime Min­is­ter said de­bate on the Fi­nance Bill would re­sume on Jan­u­ary 9.Say­ing she was not daunt­ed by the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was not the first time she dealt with falling en­er­gy prices.

"I feel very con­fi­dent of our abil­i­ty to mit­i­gate the im­pacts of low­er en­er­gy prices whilst pre­serv­ing jobs and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic growth. I re­main dou­bly fo­cussed on the task at hand."At­tempts to dis­tract my at­ten­tion and en­er­gies from my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lead and man­age the af­fairs of this na­tion will not de­ter me from my goal of a pros­per­ous and se­cure na­tion," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She added when she took of­fice T&T's fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty was "threat­ened by the $20 bil­lion-plus Cli­co de­ba­cle and the al­most $1 bil­lion HCU fi­as­co."To­day as we ap­proach the fi­nal few months of my first term as Prime Min­is­ter, I can say with a lot of con­fi­dence that T&T is in a bet­ter place than when I in­her­it­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its ad­min­is­tra­tion," she said.She not­ed that 75 labour agree­ments have been set­tled.

She added: "We have tack­led the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing crime and crim­i­nals with the lev­el of ag­gres­sion and com­mit­ment re­quired of us."We have used a com­bi­na­tion of laws and op­er­a­tional strate­gies to deal with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments."We have al­so pur­sued white col­lar crime and have done what no ad­min­is­tra­tion has done, that is, we suc­cess­ful­ly in­tro­duced Pro­cure­ment Leg­is­la­tion."

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, who al­so spoke yes­ter­day, said he had not cut back on ex­pen­di­ture in his min­istry.In­stead, he said, Cab­i­net had ap­proved $50 mil­lion for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Ex­ter­nal Pa­tient Pro­gramme which would pro­vide den­tal care, car­diac, cataract, urol­o­gy joint re­place­ment, lab and gen­er­al ra­di­o­log­i­cal ser­vices to the peo­ple of T&T.