“Al­though the T&T econ­o­my has achieved very high growth rates it has nev­er been able to do so over a sus­tained pe­ri­od. In fact, giv­en that the econ­o­my is still dom­i­nat­ed by the en­er­gy sec­tor, shocks in this sec­tor have a dra­mat­ic im­pact on the en­tire econ­o­my —par­tic­u­lar­ly, ex­ports, gov­ern­ment rev­enue and ul­ti­mate­ly growth. The eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy must there­fore ad­dress this fun­da­men­tal is­sue: the need for the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er growth cen­tres, to achieve a broad-based econ­o­my where the struc­ture of pro­duc­tion is more bal­anced and where the coun­try is to some ex­tent in­su­lat­ed from eco­nom­ic shocks gen­er­al­ly from out­side.”

The above is from the op­er­a­tional plan 2007/2010 of the Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ment.

The risks to the econ­o­my posed by fluc­tu­at­ing com­mod­i­ty prices are per­haps more rel­e­vant to­day than they were in 2007 when the Vi­sion 2020 plan was ex­pect­ed to be op­er­a­tionalised. That is be­cause there has been no fun­da­men­tal shift in the econ­o­my of T&T in the last decade.

What has in fact hap­pened is that gov­ern­ment spend­ing has in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly with trans­fers and sub­si­dies grow­ing to un­sus­tain­able lev­els. In ad­di­tion, the swings in com­mod­i­ty prices have not re­sult­ed in wind­falls for at least the last sev­en years and the ad­vent of shale oil and gas have fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the mar­ket.

Nat­ur­al gas has be­come ubiq­ui­tous glob­al­ly and T&T’s place in the in­ter­na­tion­al LNG mar­ket has been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, both in terms of its in­flu­ence and its abil­i­ty to get high prices for its car­goes; as the US mar­ket turned sour and even the ar­bi­trage in the Asian mar­ket has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced due to the im­pact of re­cent low­er de­mand in Chi­na and Japan.

In Feb­ru­ary, the world’s largest nat­ur­al gas ex­porter Qatar an­nounced it was de­lay­ing, by sev­er­al months, its choice of West­ern part­ners for the world’s largest liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) project and there is spec­u­la­tion that the de­ci­sion to de­lay was made based on cur­rent mar­ket fun­da­men­tals and the still un­clear im­pact of the coro­n­avirus.

In­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion in Aus­tralia, Qatar, Mozam­bique and Egypt, com­bined with a con­tin­u­ous­ly strong US shale gas ex­port dri­ve have pushed down prices fur­ther.

The chal­lenge to the coun­try’s main source of rev­enue has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed as the col­lapse in the price of LNG has been rel­a­tive­ly mild com­pared to what has hap­pened to oil and petro­chem­i­cal prices.

The sto­ry of the US mark­er, West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate col­laps­ing last month to be­low ze­ro dol­lars was unimag­in­able and methanol and am­mo­nia prices have been ham­mered.

T&T is a ma­jor ex­porter of methanol and am­mo­nia and the sec­tor con­tributes in ex­cess of $5 bil­lion to the coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct ac­cord­ing to a study dong by Econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rence Far­rell, and there­fore its chal­lenges that have now led to a call for tem­po­rary re­lief from high nat­ur­al gas prices is a di­rect out­come of the col­lapse of com­mod­i­ty prices.

I say all of this so that we un­der­stand the con­text in which the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery com­mit­tee set up by the prime min­is­ter in re­sponse to the eco­nom­ic cri­sis caused by the shut-in of de­mand in the glob­al econ­o­my was es­tab­lished.

I think it is fair to say the coun­try un­der­stands that these are ex­tra­or­di­nary times that re­quire the high­est qual­i­ty of lead­er­ship from all, politi­cians, busi­ness, labour, civ­il so­ci­ety and cit­i­zens.

No coun­try in the world has es­caped the neg­a­tive im­pact of the nov­el coro­n­avirus on its econ­o­my and small vul­ner­a­ble states like those in the Caribbean coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to pay a dis­pro­por­tion­ate price for it.

This is why the res­ig­na­tion of the co-vice chair of the com­mit­tee Robert Le Hunte has brought about so much angst amongst those fi­nal­ly hop­ing for a change in the for­tunes of T&T and for the coun­try to see that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of its econ­o­my is the on­ly way for sus­tain­able growth.

I have pre­vi­ous­ly point­ed out in this space that the coun­try failed when it did not im­ple­ment the vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ment and al­lowed par­ty pol­i­tics to trump what was a tru­ly na­tion­al ef­fort.

We have come full cir­cle and in so many ways we are worst off than in 2007. Oil and gas pro­duc­tion are both sig­nif­i­cant­ly down from those days. Prices are much low­er, our bal­ance of pay­ment po­si­tion was much worse, we did not have a for­eign ex­change cri­sis. Busi­ness con­fi­dence was at an all time high and the off­shore econ­o­my was boom­ing.

To be sure the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the en­tire plan would have been dif­fi­cult as it would have re­quired an­nu­al growth rates at close to nine per cent to be­come a de­vel­oped coun­try by this year but the prob­lem is we nev­er even gave it a re­al chance of suc­cess.

Even then there were warn­ing signs, and the then Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment had promised to take ac­tion.

The Vi­sion 2020 re­port warned: “The in­crease in the fis­cal deficit has large ex­tent re­sult­ed from an in­crease in Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in so­cial and eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture and in trans­fers and sub­si­dies, and a down­ward re­vi­sion of the non-en­er­gy tax regime. The strat­e­gy to re­duce the non-en­er­gy deficit will in­volve the fol­low­ing:

• mea­sures to in­crease non-en­er­gy out­put through in­creas­es in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,in­no­va­tion and the in­fu­sion of new tech­nolo­gies

• pro­mot­ing the en­try of new busi­ness­es in­to the non-en­er­gy sec­tor

• as­sist­ing firms op­er­at­ing in the busi­ness sec­tor to ex­plore new ex­port mar­kets

• re­view­ing sub­si­dies and trans­fers with a view to bet­ter tar­get­ing and ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion.”

We on­ly have to look at our bud­get to see that trans­fers and sub­si­dies have now be­come al­most half the val­ue of the na­tion­al bud­get.

The is­sue of com­pet­i­tive­ness was al­so raised way back in 2007 with the com­mit­tee find­ing that to sus­tain growth and raise the stan­dard of liv­ing there is a need to be­come more com­pet­i­tive.

“How­ev­er, we must un­der­stand that coun­tries do not com­pete, firms do. Coun­tries do not cre­ate wealth; wealth is ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed at the mi­cro lev­el of the econ­o­my, root­ed in the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of a na­tion’s firms, small and large, as well as in the qual­i­ty of the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in which these com­pa­nies com­pete. Un­less the com­pet­i­tive­ness of firms im­prove, macro­eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal, le­gal and so­cial re­form will not bear full fruit. Build­ing com­pet­i­tive firms is there­fore the fun­da­men­tal de­ter­mi­nant of the lev­el of pros­per­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment will there­fore en­able com­pet­i­tive busi­ness­es, which can com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets by pro­duc­ing world-class prod­ucts, brands and ser­vices,” the re­port read.

We have not done well as a coun­try to im­ple­ment stud­ies and re­ports. We have not shown a ca­pac­i­ty to bring our­selves out of chal­leng­ing pe­ri­ods oth­er than re­ly­ing on the next oil or gas boom, both of which are not com­ing back any­time soon.

I have said, and I re­peat, we have to fo­cus hard on the en­er­gy sec­tor but the mod­el can­not be tak­ing out as much out of the ground, tax­ing it as much as we can and pro­duc­ing pri­ma­ry prod­ucts. It has to be about deep­en­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor and link­ing it back to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. We must not con­fine our­selves to the use of our own re­sources and must see the po­ten­tial in im­port­ing mol­e­cules of gas if we need to so do.

This is not at the ex­pense of the oth­er sec­tors like man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism, cre­ative sec­tor, ship­build­ing and in new ar­eas that we have not yet thought about.

We must build a knowl­edge-based econ­o­my where there is a clear com­mit­ment from the state and pri­vate sec­tor to sci­ence and re­search and de­vel­op­ment.

We must as a coun­try think big, re­turn to plan­ning and to im­ple­men­ta­tion. We must stop the de­struc­tive pol­i­tics that says it my time now and if we cant have it we must be pre­pared to mash it up. How else can we ex­plain the UNC’s de­ci­sion not to sup­port re­cent leg­is­la­tion in the Par­lia­ment and its con­tin­ued re­fusal to vote for the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty.

Pol­i­tics is, in some ways, the great­est chal­lenge the coun­try faces, for the signs are not good from the present gov­ern­ment about a will­ing­ness to take the hard and nec­es­sary de­ci­sions and the ex­it of Mr Le Hunte, who from all ac­counts worked tire­less­ly on the Road to Re­cov­ery team is wor­ry­ing that the more things change the more they re­main the same.