Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The for­eign ex­change”drought” has been caused by en­er­gy sec­tor pro­duc­tion de­clines and the short­age of US dol­lars will not im­prove over 2025/26 but will get worse, says for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine.

Ram­nar­ine gave the pro­jec­tion at Thurs­day’s UNC eco­nom­ic con­sul­ta­tion at the La Joya Com­plex Au­di­to­ri­um in St Joseph.

He said the econ­o­my’s state is one of the two big is­sues in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“The oth­er is­sue is crime. Both are in­ter­re­lat­ed. A weak econ­o­my fu­els crime and crime weak­ens the econ­o­my—a vi­cious cy­cle...,” he said.

“The Row­ley/Young Gov­ern­ment has presided over the worst con­trac­tion in the econ­o­my since the 1980s. Un­der their watch, T&T’s econ­o­my con­tract­ed by over 17 per cent and eco­nom­ic con­fi­dence was lost to the ex­tent that our largest pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies are now in­vest­ing heav­i­ly out­side of this coun­try, buy­ing as­sets in oth­er Cari­com coun­tries and in the Unit­ed States.

“IMF da­ta in­di­cate that ours is the sev­enth worst per­form­ing econ­o­my in the world for 2016 to 2024. Top­ping us are coun­tries like Venezuela, Yemen and eighth is Ukraine.”

Ram­nar­ine said at the heart of this de­cline is a mas­sive 31 per cent de­cline in the en­er­gy sec­tor since 2015 be­cause of huge de­clines in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and oil pro­duc­tion.

“These de­clines have led to plant clo­sures, job loss­es and the clo­sure of com­pa­nies. The ev­i­dence is over­whelm­ing. In 2015, there were 20,500 peo­ple with jobs in the en­er­gy sec­tor. In 2024, that num­ber came down to an es­ti­mat­ed 12,500. In 2015, we ex­port­ed 231 car­goes of LNG and by 2024 that num­ber col­lapsed to 131. If you want to know what caused the forex drought, look no fur­ther.”

Ram­nar­ine claimed the forex short­age is a di­rect con­se­quence of low­er nat­ur­al gas, oil and petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion, which is a di­rect con­se­quence of a sig­nif­i­cant col­lapse in drilling ac­tiv­i­ty since 2015.

“Less drilling means less pro­duc­tion. It’s ei­ther you ‘drill, ba­by, drill’ or pack up and go home ... We need to wake up the en­er­gy sec­tor and the econ­o­my and we need to move quick­ly. The coun­try is fac­ing dif­fi­cult years ahead be­cause of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is­sues. UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader said so in many of her Bud­get re­spons­es and more re­cent­ly, Kei­th Row­ley and Colm Im­bert said so,” he added.

He ques­tioned what the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) could tell vot­ers it would do dif­fer­ent­ly if T&T’s econ­o­my isn’t yet back to pre-Covid lev­els.

“A cen­tral po­lit­i­cal is­sue in this elec­tion is the Drag­on deal, tout­ed as one of the great achieve­ments of the Row­ley/Young decade. The for­mer prime min­is­ter likened the Drag­on deal to the Gold­en Fleece of Greek Mythol­o­gy. They af­ford­ed great pri­ma­cy to this deal and went so far as to say if it didn’t hap­pen ‘we coo coo cooked’.”

Not­ing more US pres­sure on Venezuela would make the nat­ur­al gas quest more com­plex and un­cer­tain, Ram­nar­ine added, “This coun­try can­not plan its eco­nom­ic fu­ture on the hopes of get­ting Venezue­lan gas. Those hopes rise and fall on the ebb and flow of geopo­lit­i­cal cur­rents ... We must look with­in and de­vel­op with speed our own deep­wa­ter hy­dro­car­bon re­sources, which Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s gov­ern­ment un­locked from 2010 to 2015.”

Ram­nar­ine said the way for­ward is to re­sus­ci­tate the en­er­gy sec­tor as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

“Make the best use of idle as­sets and make them gen­er­ate forex as soon as pos­si­ble. This in­cludes idle oil-bear­ing acreage un­der the con­trol of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and the closed-down re­fin­ery.”

He al­so ad­vo­cat­ed mak­ing it eas­i­er to do busi­ness, ac­cel­er­at­ing the de­vel­op­ment of deep­wa­ter gas as­sets, re­duc­ing tax­a­tion on non-en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies to re­gain in­vest­ment and align­ing T&T to eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion in Guyana and Suri­name.