Dr Roger Ho­sein, se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, yes­ter­day warned that the T&T econ­o­my is in trou­ble."There is the growth of shale gas in the US and while they used to buy our gas now they will be our com­peti­tor. It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al in the coun­try. We need to re-cal­i­brate the econ­o­my. There is eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty but it is on­ly in a few con­cen­trat­ed ar­eas," he said.

Ho­sein made the com­ments at the launch of two of his books at the Of­fice of the Prin­ci­pal, UWI, St Au­gus­tine. One is the Ap­pli­ca­tions of In­ter­na­tion­al Trade The­o­ry: A Caribbean Per­spec­tive and the oth­er is In­for­mal Com­mer­cial Im­porters in Cari­com which he co-au­thored with Mar­tin Franklin, head of the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics at UWI.Ho­sein said Gov­ern­ment spends too much on sub­si­dies which does noth­ing pro­duc­tive for the econ­o­my.