In­evitably, the trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go to achieve a con­sis­tent­ly high stan­dard of liv­ing, cen­tres on the Gov­ern­ment, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, trade unions and, frankly, all of the pop­u­la­tion be­ing able to suc­cess­ful­ly ex­pand the ex­port sec­tor. And this is out­side of the present hy­dro­car­bon ex­trac­tive in­dus­try.

That is a con­clu­sion eas­i­ly ar­rived at by a re­view as­sess­ment of three se­nior econ­o­mists in the Busi­ness Guardian on the state of the econ­o­my and the prospects go­ing for­ward.

Fo­cused around the tempt­ing and tor­ment­ing is­sue of whether or not the Gov­ern­ment should take the op­tion of de­valu­ing the TT dol­lar in its re­la­tion­ship to the US hard cur­ren­cy, all three econ­o­mists, Dr Mar­lene Attzs, Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon and Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, the lat­ter with reser­va­tions, are cer­tain that a de­val­u­a­tion will im­me­di­ate­ly re­sult in an in­crease in the cost of liv­ing and with spi­ralling and re­lat­ed ef­fects through­out the econ­o­my.

As al­ways, de­val­u­a­tion of the cur­ren­cy of economies is de­signed to make the coun­try’s ex­ports more com­pet­i­tive on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket. But as the econ­o­mists note, there is lit­tle out­side the pe­tro­le­um, gas and petro-chem­i­cal in­dus­try in T&T to earn sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of for­eign ex­change on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

Dr Ramkissoon said he could go ei­ther way on the de­val­u­a­tion is­sue, but “if we are go­ing to im­port at the cur­rent rate and pref­er­ence, then we must al­so think about how we are go­ing to earn the for­eign ex­change to pay for the im­ports”. It’s a po­si­tion which is es­sen­tial­ly held by the oth­er econ­o­mists; that be­ing that there is no way around cre­at­ing a vi­able ex­port sec­tor.

Achiev­ing, even ven­tur­ing in­to the stim­u­la­tion of ex­port­ing po­ten­tial is not a new prob­lem for this coun­try, as well as the Plan­ta­tion Econ­o­my of the Caribbean. The his­tor­i­cal fact is that the Caribbean econ­o­my was con­struct­ed dur­ing slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship, the colo­nial and post-colo­nial pe­ri­ods, with the ob­jec­tive of ser­vic­ing the needs of the Metro­pole.

Af­ter sug­ar and a lim­it­ed range of agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports, there have been hy­dro­car­bons (now peak­ing in Guyana and Suri­name), past its peak here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Sir Arthur Lewis mod­el of In­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion by In­vi­ta­tion as a fin­ish­ing cen­tre at low wage rates of Amer­i­can prod­ucts, tourism in the East­ern Caribbean, at­tempts at off­shore bank­ing and oth­er mi­nor move­ments to gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion.

While tourism has cre­at­ed jobs, made a few links with agri­cul­ture and re­sult­ed in a cou­ple in­dige­nous ways to ser­vice the needs of vis­i­tors, it re­mains heav­i­ly im­port-de­pen­dent.

In the present in­stance, the T&T Gov­ern­ment, in recog­ni­tion of the chal­lenge to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, es­tab­lished the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board – short-lived, and the Gov­ern­ment’s own Road Map to Re­cov­ery. Nei­ther has re­sult­ed in new ini­tia­tives aimed at trans­for­ma­tion; which was the stat­ed pur­pose of cre­at­ing the two eco­nom­ic plan­ning groups.

What can be said of the fail­ures? Re­gion­al gov­ern­ments and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the main re­main hooked on eas­i­ly avail­able min­er­als, and the pop­u­la­tions have ac­quired the tastes and de­sires for im­ports. Hur­dling those ob­sta­cles re­mains a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge.

Much need­ed al­so are the es­tab­lish­ment of an ex­port and im­port re­place­ment en­vi­ron­ment and an in­no­v­a­tive and en­tre­pre­neur­ship mind­set.