Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

If TT up­sets its Cari­com part­ners, it could very dif­fi­cult not just to ex­pand, but to sim­ply sell in­to mar­kets that com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als have spent a life­time build­ing re­la­tion­ships with, says In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis.

And Lewis al­so warns that hard times are com­ing for TT and Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should have an "All Of Coun­try" ap­proach.

“Lemme tell you, like (hur­ri­cane) Melis­sa, the storm com­ing! “Lewis de­clared in Mon­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the 2026 Bud­get.

In analy­sis of the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s 2026 Bud­get - good, mid lev­el and points of con­cern - Lewis, a Har­vard grad­u­ate and long­stand­ing busi­ness strate­gist, said he'd ex­am­ined what would move the econ­o­my.

“We have to re­fo­cus the en­er­gy sec­tor, I've been sent at least three, four emails about the re­cent an­nounce­ment from the Venezue­lan of­fi­cials. That's go­ing to have to be re­done,” Lewis added.

Lewis said non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing moved from 11 per­cent to 17 per­cent, “And it's re­ly­ing large­ly on the Cari­com trade,”

“All I'll ask is, as we take what­ev­er ac­tions we need to take, or the Gov­ern­ment be­lieves they need to take, if we up­set our Cari­com part­ners ,we could find it very dif­fi­cult, not just to ex­pand, but to sim­ply sell in­to mar­kets,"he added.

Lewis added, “All I’m ask­ing is that as we do what­ev­er the Gov­ern­ment thinks they need to do, be very con­scious that not too far away - and (re­mem­ber) the way it was de­scribed to me by some­one in the sec­tor. He said, 'But for an ac­ci­dent of birth, I’m Trinida­di­an. But my mar­ket is all of Cari­com in the first in­stance’,”

The per­son didn’t think of Cari­com as an ex­port mar­ket, Lewis added, but Cari­com is his mar­ket, he trav­elled eas­i­ly across the re­gion and had re­la­tion­ships with peo­ple go­ing back 20 years.

Lewis not­ed the per­son had said, “If you 'mon­key-pants' that, all of my busi­ness is go­ing to stop or be se­vere­ly con­strained,”

He al­so said num­ber of peo­ple who didn’t vote or spoilt their bal­lot in the April gen­er­al elec­tion is sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er than ei­ther of the par­ties that won seats in Par­lia­ment, “Those peo­ple’s voic­es need to be heard..not just through me but through all of us,” he stressed.

Lewis said ,”How do we move, giv­en the con­tri­bu­tions of my col­leagues, giv­en the volatil­i­ty and un­cer­tain­ty and giv­en the need to be ag­ile.”

Sug­gest­ing a cen­tral theme of the Bud­get be “To­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve”, Lewis added, “The be­hav­iours I’ve seen: it is one thing to have ban­ter but at some time we need an all of coun­try ap­proach!”

“We have hard times com­ing! There is go­ing to be dif­fi­cul­ty ! We need to be bet­ter than some of the con­flicts I’ve seen!,”

“I un­der­stand there are par­ti­san in­ter­ests, that par­ties mat­ter in our sys­tem and you have to win an elec­tion. But my con­cern is how do we move from cam­paign­ing to gov­ern­ing..."

“But how do we pre­pare the pop­u­la­tion for what is to come and lemme tell yuh- like (hur­ri­cane) Melis­sa - the storm com­ing! We have the ca­pac­i­ty to deal with it…our fore­fa­thers have pre­pared us and this econ­o­my,” Lewis added, un­der­scor­ing how Mem­bers work to­geth­er in the Sen­ate and how their be­hav­iour trans­lates in­to how they find com­mon cause.

"keep de­val­u­a­tion on the ta­ble"

Con­cerned about the Bud­get's en­er­gy price ba­sis, Lewis said every­thing he’d read sug­gests there will be ex­pan­sion of en­er­gy pro­duc­tion over the next sev­er­al years and like­li­hood that prices will drop.

He said if Gov­ern­ment over­priced or over­es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue ,”You go­ing and ketch hell- we the coun­try are go­ing to ketch hell be­cause you’re go­ing to have rev­enue short­fall you should have an­tic­i­pat­ed.”

Lewis said the deficits would al­so put pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment and coun­try and the cost of ser­vic­ing the ex­ter­nal loans will cre­ate oth­er pres­sures. He al­so wasn’t sure that deal­ing with the for­eign ex­change is­sue had arisen.

“It's a burn­ing is­sue. The sense I have is our eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals - par­tic­u­lar­ly for­eign ex­change- are out of kil­ter. That has to be fixed. I’m not ad­vo­cat­ing de­val­u­a­tion but it should not be off the ta­ble,” Lewis added not­ing he was there when TT had a 35 per­cent de­val­u­a­tion in 1991.

"That set the stage for suc­cess through the 1990s. Will it cause hard­ship? Prob­a­bly yes . I'm not ad­vo­cat­ing for it, but it can­not be tak­en off the ta­ble be­cause you've got­ta get the thing bal­anced. Right now we 're out of bal­ance, it's re­flect­ed through­out the econ­o­my..."

Lewis said he'd seen a lot less fo­cus in the Bud­get on rev­enue gen­er­a­tion. "You can­not spend what you don’t have! ” he added.

Lewis queried whether Gov­ern­ment would have a min­is­ter fo­cus­ing on rev­enue gen­er­a­tion or a Rev­enue Min­istry, "Be­cause as the world en­vi­ron­ment changes I sus­pect we’re go­ing to have less mon­ey to spend. That means in­creased pres­sure for al­lo­ca­tions and cash flow If this Gov­ern­ment doesn’t re­shape this econ­o­my, you’d have lost a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty. The Bud­get gives you half a step."