For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Wen­dell Mot­t­ley is of­fer­ing a "quick-fix" so­lu­tion to the pend­ing rev­enue prob­lems fac­ing the econ­o­my when he says on­ly the en­er­gy sec­tor has the kind of dy­namism and po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate quick fi­nan­cial gains for T&T. Mr Mot­t­ley, fi­nance min­is­ter in the 1991-1995 Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion who ad­vanced the mon­eti­sa­tion of the nat­ur­al gas and petro-chem­i­cal sec­tor, says it is this sec­tor which can at­tract for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment through what he calls a "re-en­er­gis­ing process."

It is well known that the im­me­di­ate need of the econ­o­my is to find re­place­ment rev­enue for that lost be­cause of the av­er­age soft­en­ing of en­er­gy prices over the last cou­ple years and for the fail­ure of the world econ­o­my to ful­ly re­gen­er­ate it­self.

In this re­spect, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund has low­ered the pro­ject­ed rate of in­ter­na­tion­al growth to four per cent for 2011, down from 4.3 per cent at June. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the Fund in­di­cates that the lev­els of growth in the de­vel­oped, in­dus­tri­al economies would be as low as two per cent while growth in cer­tain de­vel­op­ing economies would reach as high as six per cent. The predica­ment of T&T is that its ex­port mar­kets are in the de­vel­oped economies of the North and any fail­ure at ro­bust growth in those economies will im­pact us here. Mr Mot­t­ley's own pre­dic­tion is that this round of in­ter­na­tion­al de­cline will im­pact more se­vere­ly here in T&T than in 2008, the log­ic be­ing that back then en­er­gy prices had been high for a num­ber of years, rev­enue was still rel­a­tive­ly strong, sav­ings were high­er and the debt was low­er.

This time around, too, the Cred­it Su­isse se­nior banker is say­ing that with rev­enues short, the so­cial wel­fare pro­gramme built up over the pe­ri­od of plen­ty could be in se­ri­ous dan­ger if the Gov­ern­ment does not quick­ly hit up­on a few ma­jor rev­enue earn­ers. Fac­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an as he fi­nalis­es the 2012 bud­get is the task of clos­ing the re­port­ed $7 bil­lion fis­cal gap be­tween ex­pen­di­ture and rev­enue of 2011-2012. Sug­ges­tions made by Mr Mot­t­ley and sev­er­al se­nior econ­o­mists here have iden­ti­fied the gaso­line sub­sidy as a ma­jor tar­get to be re­duced. Mr Mot­t­ley has iden­ti­fied one of the dif­fi­cul­ties of cut­ting sub­si­dies to the pop­u­la­tion as the fact that dur­ing boom pe­ri­ods the pop­u­la­tion gets hooked on sub­si­dies. Any re­duc­tion and/or re­moval of those sub­si­dies on ba­sic con­sumer goods will im­pact se­vere­ly on those at the low end of the econ­o­my.

Now Mr Mot­t­ley's sug­ges­tion that the Gov­ern­ment once again pins its hopes on the en­er­gy sec­tor for re­vival seems to be con­trary to what has been for a long time the eco­nom­ic log­ic of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my. But a clos­er read­ing of Mr Mot­t­ley's ad­vice does not see him blank­ing the eco­nom­ic wis­dom of mov­ing the econ­o­my to a place where it will have sev­er­al eco­nom­ic sec­tors to gen­er­ate growth and de­vel­op the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety. What Mr Mot­t­ley is say­ing is that, look­ing at the eco­nom­ic op­tions fac­ing the coun­try, at the mo­ment on­ly the en­er­gy sec­tor can in a short space of time re­turn growth, rev­enue and the pos­si­bil­i­ty for kick-start­ing the econ­o­my. An im­me­di­ate re­sponse would nat­u­ral­ly be that if the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion process had start­ed in earnest dur­ing the pe­ri­od of Mr Mot­t­ley be­ing the fi­nance min­is­ter, the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion process would be bear­ing fruit by now.

The trick for Min­is­ter Dook­er­an to achieve would be to look for quick win­ners while the medi­um to long-term eco­nom­ic plat­form is be­ing es­tab­lished. Even the most en­thu­si­as­tic en­er­gy an­a­lysts do not give the en­er­gy sec­tor here longer than 30 years be­fore it goes in­to deep de­cline.