From any van­tage point, 2020 was a dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing year. It be­gan with a weak eco­nom­ic out­look which grew weak­er as the year ad­vanced. En­er­gy prices were soft, oil and nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion stag­nant or de­clin­ing, with sev­er­al plants in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor “tem­porar­i­ly” closed wait­ing for the petro­chem­i­cal mar­ket to re­bound. Gun-re­lat­ed crime con­tin­ued to pose a dilem­ma and as did the in­flow of un­doc­u­ment­ed Venezue­lan mi­grants. And then came COVID-19 which pro­duced ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ca­tions that are chal­leng­ing gov­ern­ments in rich­er coun­tries with more re­sources.

As 2021 be­gins, none of last year's chal­lenges has been com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dressed, far less re­solved. On­ly one of them, COVID-19, was new. The re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic has pro­duced some pos­i­tives. Whilst there have been delin­quents, most cit­i­zens have com­plied, ad­just­ing their hy­giene habits, and man­ag­ing their so­cial in­ter­ac­tions. But even if COVID-19 may have been con­tained lo­cal­ly, it has not been con­trolled. The ev­i­dence of a sec­ond wave and mu­ta­tions in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions is a warn­ing for T&T to be con­tin­u­ous­ly vig­i­lant.

Schools have re­mained closed, though there will be some re­lax­ation this year. On­line teach­ing has been pressed in­to ser­vice, graft­ed on­to a teach­ing sys­tem which is en­tire­ly un­used to this de­liv­ery method. De­spite the best as­sur­ances of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, too many stu­dents do not have ac­cess to the nec­es­sary re­sources to ben­e­fit from this new de­liv­ery method and are be­ing left be­hind. It did not re­quire the skill of a for­tune teller to recog­nise that a dif­fer­ent ap­proach and ad­di­tion­al re­sources would be re­quired, or that the sys­tem would be stretched the longer the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues.

The Venezue­lan mi­grant cri­sis is not new. Yet a well-ar­tic­u­lat­ed pol­i­cy sup­port­ed by con­cert­ed ac­tion on the high seas, or on the shore­line, re­mains elu­sive. In­deed, the bor­der pol­i­cy seems on­ly to neg­a­tive­ly af­fect main­ly na­tion­als strand­ed abroad, a per­verse out­come.

The un­der­ly­ing prob­lem in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor re­mains the price of nat­ur­al gas sold by NGC to down­stream com­pa­nies. Soft in­ter­na­tion­al prices for petro­chem­i­cals have ex­ac­er­bat­ed this sit­u­a­tion. Worse still, the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas, the key for­eign ex­change earn­er which dri­ves the rest of the econ­o­my, is fal­ter­ing. The En­er­gy Min­istry's sta­tis­tics show av­er­age nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion at 2.8 bcfd in more re­cent months a de­cline of 20 per cent since 2019.

For­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty re­mains a key for the non-en­er­gy sec­tor's per­for­mance, the ma­jor em­ploy­er. Anec­do­tal and sta­tis­ti­cal ev­i­dence sug­gests that forex sales by the bank­ing sec­tor to the pub­lic have de­clined thus re­quir­ing that busi­ness­es repo­si­tion and ad­just their staffing lev­els. The re­cov­ery com­mit­tee re­port­ed and made its rec­om­men­da­tions months ago. What has been trans­lat­ed in­to pol­i­cy and ac­tion? Rec­om­men­da­tions that are not sup­port­ed by a bud­get are in­ef­fec­tive and have val­ue on­ly as a pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise.

This ad­min­is­tra­tion was re-elect­ed a mere four months ago, pre­sum­ably be­cause they were the bet­ter, rather than the least bad, op­tion to gov­ern the coun­try. Pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cis­es like the “Spot­light” on En­er­gy or Ed­u­ca­tion are on­ly use­ful if the ideas they gen­er­ate are used to change pol­i­cy and dri­ve ac­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this has not hap­pened. Rather, this ad­min­is­tra­tion spent its first five years blam­ing the UNC for their profli­ga­cy and every oth­er short­com­ing. But it is this ad­min­is­tra­tion that weak­ened the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, open­ing the very loop­holes the act was de­signed to close.

En­er­gy prices fell in 2014. By now every­one should un­der­stand that it is not busi­ness as usu­al and some sac­ri­fice will be nec­es­sary. This re­quires lead­er­ship, man­age­ment, a plan, and ac­tion. This ad­min­is­tra­tion can­not con­tin­ue to blame the Op­po­si­tion for its in­abil­i­ty to ad­dress key ar­eas. It was elect­ed to gov­ern, and the coun­try needs con­cert­ed, mea­sured ac­tion, not plat­i­tudes.