Two re­cent failed projects un­der­score the need to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my away from de­pen­den­cy on en­er­gy mod­el!

With­in the last four weeks, both the SABIC methanol deal worth US$5 bil­lion and the Sev­er­stal Iron and Steel deal worth US$600 mil­lion have fall­en through.

This is be­cause these in­vestors can now get their oil and gas at sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er prices in the Unit­ed States. It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand that the process in get­ting these com­pa­nies to sign in­to T&T was an ar­du­ous one in the first place. A lot of due dili­gence and re­search would have had to be un­der­tak­en by their re­spec­tive cor­po­rate de­part­ments. In the same way, a lot of dig­ging al­so went on be­fore they de­cid­ed to move out of T&T.

Re­mem­ber, these com­pa­nies are glob­al play­ers and are con­stant­ly scan­ning the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment to see where they can get the most com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

This is on­ly the start. When the US re­al­ly cranks up their shale/frack­ing pro­duc­tion, we can ex­pect even the cur­rent com­pa­nies lo­cat­ed in Point Lisas pro­duc­ing urea, am­mo­nia, methanol, etc, to moth­ball their op­er­a­tions here and move to green­er pas­tures where they can ac­cess cheap­er oil and gas so they can make more prof­it.

Bot­tom line: this will have a trau­mat­ic shrink­age in gov­ern­ment's rev­enues shrink­ing the mon­ey avail­able for salaries to civ­il ser­vants (50 per cent of labour force), Cepep and URP em­ploy­ees (15 per cent), pen­sion/NIS pay­ments, CDAP drugs, gas/diesel sub­si­dies; deep cuts in every­one's dis­pos­al in­come.

What we have to do now, how­ev­er, to stay ahead of the curve is to get the TTMA, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, unions, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and cap­tains of in­dus­try to come to­geth­er to ham­mer out a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan for the rewiring of our econ­o­my.

This di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan–ship re­pair fa­cil­i­ties, co­coa pro­duc­tion, con­tact cen­tres, etc–has to be done with­in a six-month time­frame, and then time­lines have to be con­cre­tised for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this plan.

Sug­gest, giv­en the ex­cel­lent job done by Arthur Lock Jack in terms of the Vi­sion 2020 Plan, that he be made the chair­man of this com­mit­tee, with Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath be­ing gov­ern­ment's point man. Who­ev­er we choose, we need to start now and get mov­ing quick­ly; your salary, or rel­a­tive's pen­sion may de­pend on this.

Roger Gor­don

Cas­cade