Al­though T&T has been down­grad­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing agency Stan­dard and Poor's, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is as­sur­ing the coun­try that its busi­ness and its fu­ture is in good hands.

In a mes­sage post­ed to his Face­book page hours af­ter the agency down­grad­ed T&T on Tues­day, Row­ley ad­mit­ted that while T&T is still rat­ed as an in­vest­ment grade the coun­try is still in se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ty.

The down­grade in T&T’s sov­er­eign rat­ing is as a re­sult of S&P’s pro­jec­tion of a low­er than ex­pect­ed en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and eco­nom­ic growth which it ex­pects will weak­en the coun­try's rev­enue base and de­lay Gov­ern­ment’s plans to bal­ance the bud­get by fis­cal year 2020-2021.

As a re­sult of its fore­cast, Stan­dard and Poor’s low­ered its long-term for­eign and lo­cal cur­ren­cy sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ings on Trinidad and To­ba­go to BBB from BBB+ and af­firmed its short-term for­eign and lo­cal cur­ren­cy sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ings at A-2.

But in his re­sponse, the PM said the Gov­ern­ment was "not on that wave­length" and do­ing every­thing in its pow­er to en­sure the sit­u­a­tion did not ma­te­ri­alise.

Not­ing his re­cent mis­sions abroad to meet with all the ma­jor en­er­gy play­ers, the PM said, "That trip was to make sure that this pre­dic­tion of a re­duc­tion in gas pro­duc­tion does not come to pass," Row­ley said.

He point­ed out that Stan­dard and Poor's is al­so pre­dict­ing a loss in oil pro­duc­tion but added that he now-shut­tered Petrotrin has gone from drilling ze­ro wells to its suc­ces­sor Her­itage now drilling 16-18 wells.

"That pre­dic­tion will not come to pass," Row­ley as­sured.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that the rat­ing agency has up­grad­ed T&T's out­look from neg­a­tive to sta­ble.

"The rea­son for this is our favourable ex­ter­nal pro­file and our sta­ble democ­ra­cy. They al­so say it re­flects on the coun­try’s sol­id lev­el of Gov­ern­ment fi­nan­cial as­sets and good fis­cal and ex­ter­nal per­for­mance," Row­ley said.

He added that Gov­ern­ment's as­sign­ment, as "un­pleas­ant" as it is, is to run the coun­try on $10 bil­lion less in in­come.

"Any gov­ern­ment that is not pre­pared to take the hard de­ci­sions for the peo­ple’s in­ter­est is a gov­ern­ment that you have no use for," Row­ley added.