The much an­tic­i­pat­ed na­tion­al bud­get de­bate col­lapsed with a whim­per last week. The back and forth as to who was re­spon­si­ble and why is large­ly ir­rel­e­vant out­side of the pol­i­tics. This col­umn is tak­ing the eco­nom­ic vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the lack of de­bate to in­tro­duce the most crit­i­cal is­sue in­to the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion. It is an is­sue which will de­ter­mine how we man­age our eco­nom­ic af­fairs for the rest of our lives and so it is rel­e­vant to every­one with the abil­i­ty to read this col­umn.

You have not heard of this dis­cus­sion in this way be­fore. I am fair­ly cer­tain of that. We talk about all sorts of eco­nom­ic mea­sures such as ex­plor­ing for oil and gas, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, green econ­o­my, for­eign ex­change growth, the dig­i­tal econ­o­my and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence but the over­ar­ch­ing frame­work that goes above all of this is ab­sent from the con­ver­sa­tion and has not been ad­dressed con­struc­tive­ly by any politi­cian, econ­o­mist or an­a­lyst on the many pan­els dis­cussing the bud­get.

We are fac­ing two pro­found eco­nom­ic forces that will shape Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture more than any bud­get al­lo­ca­tion or fis­cal mea­sure: the ur­gent need for in­no­va­tion-dri­ven growth and the in­ex­orable ag­ing of our pop­u­la­tion. Up un­til now, pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions treat these as sep­a­rate is­sues, when in fact they are deeply in­ter­con­nect­ed.

More crit­i­cal­ly, we treat ag­ing as a prob­lem to be man­aged rather than an eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty to be lever­aged. This fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing is cost­ing us the chance to build a gen­uine­ly sus­tain­able econ­o­my, one that is con­sis­tent with the coun­try’s needs in­to the next gen­er­a­tion.

The num­bers are stark and un­avoid­able. We know of the ag­ing pop­u­la­tion dy­nam­ic be­cause we live here and it has been put for­ward by many, in­clud­ing me for more than a decade, es­pe­cial­ly in the dis­cus­sions around the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem.

We are ag­ing faster than many de­vel­oped na­tions did, but with­out the in­sti­tu­tion­al prepa­ra­tion or eco­nom­ic cush­ion they built dur­ing their de­mo­graph­ic tran­si­tions. Yet that is not the on­ly prob­lem.

In­no­va­tion

At the same time, our in­no­va­tion per­for­mance is slid­ing. Trinidad and To­ba­go is clas­si­fied as a high in­come econ­o­my due to its sub­stan­tial oil and gas rev­enues, but its in­no­va­tion per­for­mance lags sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­hind oth­er high in­come coun­tries. Ac­cord­ing to the World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex (GII), Trinidad and To­ba­go ranked 114th out of 139 economies in the 2025 edi­tion of the in­dex. This is a drop from 108th in 2024 and 97th in 2021, in­di­cat­ing a down­ward trend in rel­a­tive in­no­va­tion per­for­mance over re­cent years.

No­tably, T&T is last among all high in­come coun­tries in the GII (54th of 54 in its in­come group) and 17th of 21 coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, un­der­scor­ing the gap be­tween T&T and its peers.

The rank of 17th out of 21 for our re­gion puts us be­hind Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Cos­ta Ri­ca among oth­ers, coun­tries with much less re­sources than we start­ed out with. The as­sess­ment notes we “per­form be­low ex­pec­ta­tions for our lev­el of de­vel­op­ment” in in­no­va­tion out­puts. We are clas­si­fied the­o­ret­i­cal­ly as an in­no­va­tion-dri­ven econ­o­my, yet our ac­tu­al in­no­va­tion ca­pac­i­ty is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing while coun­tries around us are build­ing theirs.

These two trends, ag­ing and in­no­va­tion deficit, are on a col­li­sion course. The ques­tion is whether we build an econ­o­my that turns this col­li­sion in­to some­thing pos­i­tive through syn­the­sis or whether we sim­ply watch both forces grind us down.

Up un­til now, we have de­vel­oped a habit of com­par­ing gas prices in Bar­ba­dos and elec­tric­i­ty rates in Ja­maica to ca­jole the pop­u­la­tion to ac­cept cer­tain mea­sures. We hard­ly ever use com­par­isons for con­struc­tive for­ward-think­ing ap­proach­es.

Chile leads the way in terms of in­no­va­tion in our re­gion, and I have spent many col­umn inch­es over the years writ­ing about ini­tia­tives such as “Start Up Chile” that could serve as a blue print for our pur­pos­es.

There are al­so lessons in how to com­bine for both in­no­va­tion and longevi­ty if we care to look. For ex­am­ple, Japan of­fers the best in­sight at get­ting ag­ing and in­no­va­tion work­ing in tan­dem. As the world’s old­est, large so­ci­ety, Japan was forced to pi­o­neer so­lu­tions. Japan­ese firms lead glob­al­ly in de­vel­op­ing ro­bots for el­der­care and au­toma­tion to com­pen­sate for a shrink­ing young work­force. But Japan al­so rec­og­nized that old­er work­ers are them­selves an eco­nom­ic re­source. About one in four peo­ple over 65 re­mains em­ployed in Japan, and sur­veys show 80 per cent of Japan­ese work­ers ap­proach­ing re­tire­ment age want to keep work­ing. The coun­try has cre­at­ed struc­tures to fa­cil­i­tate ex­tend­ed em­ploy­ment, flex­i­ble re­tire­ment and re-em­ploy­ment of re­tirees.

The les­son is not that every­one should work un­til they drop. The les­son is that an ag­ing so­ci­ety cre­ates mas­sive de­mand for in­no­va­tion in health­care, as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy, hous­ing, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and leisure, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­tain­ing with­in that ag­ing pop­u­la­tion enor­mous ex­pe­ri­ence, skill and pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty. Japan turned de­mo­graph­ic cri­sis in­to a dri­ver of tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment and main­tained eco­nom­ic out­put by keep­ing old­er work­ers en­gaged.

The point is that while it is good to in­vest in a Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, it is equal­ly if not more im­por­tant to in­vest in a for­ward-look­ing ver­sion of el­der care, lever­ag­ing our bet­ter re­gion­al in­fra­struc­ture and re­sources, be­cause it is the en­tire Caribbean pop­u­la­tion that is ag­ing rapid­ly.

Sin­ga­pore took a dif­fer­ent but com­ple­men­tary path to Japan. Fac­ing its own ag­ing de­mo­graph­ic with a small pop­u­la­tion base, Sin­ga­pore re­spond­ed by ag­gres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing in­no­va­tion, be­com­ing a tech and biotech hub, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ad­just­ing poli­cies for old­er work­ers. The re­tire­ment age was raised. Train­ing cred­its for mid-ca­reer work­ers were ex­pand­ed. The re­sult is a coun­try that re­mains at the in­no­va­tion fron­tier while man­ag­ing pop­u­la­tion ag­ing bet­ter than most. Sin­ga­pore’s ex­pe­ri­ence demon­strates that strong pub­lic in­vest­ment in in­no­va­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, R&D in­cen­tives and start­up in­cu­ba­tors can dri­ve growth even as the pop­u­la­tion ages, es­pe­cial­ly when cou­pled with mea­sures that keep old­er peo­ple eco­nom­i­cal­ly en­gaged.

When the nec­es­sary re­stric­tions were placed on the Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE) pro­gramme, I asked in this col­umn where are the pro­vi­sions be­ing made for the nec­es­sary re­train­ing of the over-40 work­force. This unan­swered ques­tion was asked be­fore the pop­u­lar ad­vent of ar­tif­i­cal in­tel­li­gence. Now it is both nec­es­sary and ur­gent.

Lo­cal Con­text

Ac­cord­ing to a March 2025 ar­ti­cle in Eu­romon­i­tor, spend­ing by “60+ house­holds” out­paced all oth­er de­mo­graph­ics and will gen­er­ate 31 per cent of glob­al gross in­come by 2040. We ig­nore this be­cause of the stereo­typ­ing. The as­sump­tion is that this de­mo­graph­ic pri­or­i­tize es­sen­tials, where­as the mod­ern day ver­sion is that dis­cre­tionary spend­ing con­sti­tutes near­ly half their spend­ing.

In 2011 at a pre-Bud­get con­sul­ta­tion host­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, I pre­sent­ed that T&T as the most de­vel­oped Eng­lish speak­ing coun­try in the West­ern Hemi­sphere out­side of the US and Cana­da should seek to take ad­van­tage of the re­tire­ment of the “ba­by boom” gen­er­a­tion, which is the wealth­i­est de­mo­graph­ic in the his­to­ry of mankind. As is usu­al with pro­pos­als of this na­ture, it went nowhere.

The re­al­i­ty is that T&T has been sleep­walk­ing in­to a de­mo­graph­ic and eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion with no co­her­ent strat­e­gy. We have en­tre­pre­neur­ship pro­grammes and in­no­va­tion labs, which rep­re­sent progress, but these ex­ist as iso­lat­ed ini­tia­tives rather than as part of an in­te­grat­ed eco­nom­ic vi­sion. We talk about our ag­ing pop­u­la­tion al­most ex­clu­sive­ly in the con­text of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board cri­sis, where pen­sion pay­outs are ex­ceed­ing con­tri­bu­tions. This fram­ing of pen­sions as a bur­den, com­plete­ly miss­es the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty.

We treat in­no­va­tion and ag­ing as sep­a­rate pol­i­cy si­los. We see the ag­ing pop­u­la­tion as un­der the Min­istries of Fi­nance (pen­sions), Health and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. We see in­no­va­tion and things like in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship as un­der the Min­istries of Trade and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion. No­body is con­nect­ing the dots to see that there is an over­all plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment is­sue and that the so­lu­tions to one chal­lenge can dri­ve growth in ad­dress­ing the oth­er.

We have a choice. We can con­tin­ue treat­ing in­no­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and the dig­i­tal econ­o­my as a younger de­mo­graph­ic is­sue and ag­ing as a so­cial wel­fare prob­lem or we can rec­og­nize the need to in­te­grate and form a co­her­ent pol­i­cy for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Ian Nar­ine is an ag­ing, tech lit­er­ate fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant. Please send your com­ments to ian@ian­nar­ine.com