By Vivek Char­ran

Trinidad and To­ba­go is fac­ing a sober­ing eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty. While our for­eign ex­change re­serves have been steadi­ly shrink­ing, our food im­port bill has been climb­ing re­lent­less­ly. And yet, our pop­u­la­tion has re­mained vir­tu­al­ly flat for more than a decade.

The para­dox deep­ens when we look clos­er. Not on­ly has the to­tal food im­port bill surged, but a sig­nif­i­cant share of for­eign ex­change has been de­lib­er­ate­ly chan­nelled in­to food through both the com­mer­cial banks and the Ex­im­Bank’s es­sen­tial items win­dow. The re­sult is a sys­tem that may have sta­bilised sup­ply but has al­so locked us deep­er in­to de­pen­den­cy and an un­sus­tain­able hunger for USD.

The ris­ing food im­port bill

Let’s be­gin with the ba­sics. Ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment bud­get state­ments and Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) es­ti­mates:

* Be­tween 2003 and 2016, Trinidad and To­ba­go spent about US$8.9 bil­lion (TT$56.9 bil­lion) on food im­ports — av­er­ag­ing rough­ly US$635 mil­lion (TT$3.85 bil­lion) per year;

* By 2019, the food im­port bill had climbed to TT$5.7 bil­lion (US$842 mil­lion);

* In 2020, it stood at TT$5.6 bil­lion (US$827 mil­lion).

* In 2021, again TT$5.7 bil­lion (US$842 mil­lion);

* Then came the jump: TT$7.3 bil­lion (US$1.08 bil­lion) in 2022 and TT$7.2 bil­lion (US$1.06 bil­lion) in 2023.

In less than five years, the cost surged by al­most 30 per cen in TTD terms and crossed the US$1 bil­lion mark for the first time. This is near­ly dou­ble the TT$3.85 bil­lion av­er­age seen be­tween 2003 and 2016, when the coun­try spent about US$8.91 bil­lion (≈TT$56.9 bil­lion) on im­port­ed food over that pe­ri­od. The na­tion­al food im­port bill has near­ly dou­bled com­pared to the ear­ly 2000s

Con­trast this with our pop­u­la­tion fig­ures. CSO mid-year es­ti­mates show that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion has hov­ered around 1.36–1.37 mil­lion peo­ple for more than a decade. We are not feed­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly more peo­ple than be­fore.

.Forex re­serves in de­cline

This surge in im­ports co­in­cides with a wor­ry­ing de­cline in our forex re­serves:

* 2020: US$6.95B

* 2021: US$6.88B

* 2022: US$6.83B

* 2023: US$6.26B

* 2024: US$5.60B

We are spend­ing more on im­port­ed food while hav­ing less for­eign ex­change avail­able over­all — an im­bal­ance that is un­sus­tain­able.

Per Per­son and House­hold Bur­den

When bro­ken down, the im­pact is even clear­er:

* In 2023, the food im­port bill equat­ed to TT$5,255 (US$776) per per­son;

* At the house­hold lev­el (≈428,000 house­holds, 3.2 per­sons each), this comes to TT$16,818 (US$2,484) per year per house­hold.

Whether you per­son­al­ly buy im­port­ed sar­dines or cur­ry pow­der or not, every house­hold in Trinidad and To­ba­go is ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry­ing thou­sands of dol­lars in forex costs for food im­ports an­nu­al­ly.

Ex­im­bank’s Es­sen­tial Food Im­ports

Now con­sid­er the sep­a­rate role of the Ex­im­bank Es­sen­tial Items Win­dow.

Be­tween Ju­ly 2020 and June 2025, food-re­lat­ed com­pa­nies re­ceived a to­tal of US$1.18 bil­lion in forex al­lo­ca­tions. Spread across five years, that equals about:

* US$236M per year (≈TT$1.6B per year) in forex specif­i­cal­ly ear­marked for food.

* This alone amounts to about TT$3,700 per house­hold an­nu­al­ly.

This is not the whole food im­port bill. It is the share of forex that gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy has cho­sen to guar­an­tee di­rect­ly to im­porters for cer­tain cat­e­gories of food. There­fore if $236M per year for the pe­ri­od was spent on Es­sen­tial Food items then us­ing

What Counts as “Es­sen­tial”?

Ex­im­bank’s list of forex-pri­or­i­ty food items in­cludes:

* Sta­ples such as rice, wheat flour, bread, pas­ta, oat­meal, ce­re­al;

* Pro­teins & dairy: In­fant for­mu­la, milk, eggs (ta­ble, hatch­ing, liq­uid), but­ter, mar­garine, ched­dar cheese, canned corned beef, sar­dines, tu­na, salt­ed fish, sausages, meats (ex­clud­ing poul­try);

* Legumes & feed: Dried and canned peas/beans, poul­try grain in­puts

* Oils & sug­ar: Soy­bean oil, canola oil, brown sug­ar

* Condi­ments: Onions, gar­lic, cur­ry, vine­gar

At first glance, this seems en­tire­ly rea­son­able. But here lies the para­dox: how many of these items could rea­son­ably be pro­duced or processed lo­cal­ly?

Onions, gar­lic, eggs, vine­gar, and cur­ry pow­der are not ex­ot­ic lux­u­ries. They are well with­in the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce. Yet they re­main on the forex pri­or­i­ty list, ab­sorb­ing mil­lions in al­lo­ca­tions every year. The Ex­im­Bank list pub­lished last week­end in­di­cates that there are 26 com­pa­nies out of 30 that are us­ing the es­sen­tial food win­dow to im­port a nar­row range of goods as de­fined and note poul­try is ex­clud­ed from that list.

This would mean that the bal­ance of the im­port bill would be in the range of $824M is spent on non-es­sen­tial food items or items not cov­ered by the es­sen­tail list.

The hard ques­tions

If the pop­u­la­tion has re­mained vir­tu­al­ly flat, then the rise in the im­port bill sug­gests that the sys­tem—how­ev­er well-in­ten­tioned—may have un­in­ten­tion­al­ly re­in­forced de­pen­den­cy on im­ports rather than en­cour­ag­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

We must ask: Has the pop­u­la­tion re­al­ly been con­sum­ing more sta­ples as de­fined by Ex­im­Bank? Or has the forex win­dow been used to im­port more than just sta­ples — more vol­ume, more processed items, and more prod­ucts, some of which we could pro­duce our­selves?

Is our sta­ble pop­u­la­tion re­al­ly eat­ing us out of forex?

Is the surg­ing im­port cost of food dri­ven by and equal to the con­sump­tion of food by our pop­u­la­tion?

If the in­creas­ing forex costs of CDAP and pre­scrip­tion and OTC meds—meant to treat the var­i­ous types of co­mor­bidi­ties plagu­ing our pop­u­la­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, PCOS and heart dis­ease—is due in part to di­et and types of food sus­tained by pref­er­en­tial forex al­lo­ca­tion in com­mer­cial banks are we not in fact sus­tain­ing a larg­er health prob­lem that could be a tick­ing time bomb should we find our­selves on a forex pro­duc­tion pos­si­bil­i­ty curve be­tween med­ica­tion and food .

The pol­i­cy para­dox

The Ex­im­Bank win­dow was de­signed to sta­bilise sup­ply and en­sure that cit­i­zens could al­ways ac­cess ba­sic food items. But by guar­an­tee­ing forex for such a wide range of prod­ucts, it may have re­duced in­cen­tives for busi­ness­es to part­ner with lo­cal farm­ers or in­vest in agro-pro­cess­ing.

It is eas­i­er and less risky to im­port onions or vine­gar with guar­an­teed forex than to in­vest in lo­cal pro­duc­tion that faces cli­mate, pest, and mar­ket risks.

Thus, a pol­i­cy de­signed for sta­bil­i­ty may have be­come a pol­i­cy of de­pen­den­cy.

Why it mat­ters

Food im­ports are not just an­oth­er bud­get line. They rep­re­sent the sin­gle largest draw on forex out­side of en­er­gy im­ports.

Every TT dol­lar spent on im­port­ed fresh pro­duce is one less dol­lar sup­port­ing a lo­cal farmer. Every al­lo­ca­tion for cur­ry or vine­gar is a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty for an agro-proces­sor to cre­ate jobs and val­ue right here at home. Is every US$10,000 spend on im­port­ed sug­ary con­fec­tionery and snacks worth the po­ten­tial loss of rev­enues and fi­nan­cial hard­ship to an­oth­er re­tail type busi­ness that cant get US­Ds?

At the house­hold lev­el, the bur­den is clear: thou­sands of dol­lars per fam­i­ly each year. At the na­tion­al lev­el, the pic­ture is stark­er: ris­ing food im­ports, falling re­serves, and no pop­u­la­tion growth to jus­ti­fy the gap

The con­tra­dic­tion is stark:

* To­tal food im­ports ris­ing (TT$7.2B in 2023)

* Forex re­serves falling (US$5.6B in 2024)

* Pop­u­la­tion flat (~1.37M)

* Ex­im­bank forex sup­port av­er­ag­ing TT$1.6B/year just for food

This is not sus­tain­able. If 22.3 per cent of our year­ly US$1.06 bil­lion food im­port bill are es­sen­tial foods then that means 77.7 per cent of our im­port­ed food is not. If cuts have to be made, they should be made here.

Un­less we con­front this para­dox, the bill will keep climb­ing, re­serves will keep shrink­ing, and house­holds will con­tin­ue to car­ry the weight. If the food im­port bill con­tin­ues to rise while in the short-term forex re­serves con­tin­ue its de­cline, then we will reach a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion.

Sim­i­lar­ly if the food im­port bill re­mains at this lev­el and forex re­serves con­tin­ue to be stressed and re­main in de­cline in the short term, it will al­so pre­cip­i­tate a crit­i­cal sce­nario.

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­plies and toi­letries to­geth­er with food im­ports and not im­port­ed cars and lux­u­ry re­tail goods, as is the pop­u­lar opin­ion, have large­ly boomed dur­ing and af­ter the COVID-19 lock­down af­ter be­ing as­sured a forex sup­ply while oth­er types of busi­ness were ra­tioned.

If cuts have to made to save forex and con­serve ex­ist­ing re­serves for now and in­to the next few years, then it should be­gin here. The choice is sim­ple: keep feed­ing the na­tion through for­eign ports, or in­vest in feed­ing our­selves — and start the forex cuts where they least harm food se­cu­ri­ty.

Vivek Char­ran is chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers and chairs the com­pa­ny that owns Char­ran Book­stores