JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Leadership desperately needed

by

Curtis Williams
1468 days ago
20210721

T&T has be­come a coun­try where many are afraid to ex­press a view for fear of be­ing brand­ed a po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tive of ei­ther the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment or the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

I see it all the time as peo­ple, of­ten with in­flu­ence in the so­ci­ety, call me or mes­sage me say­ing they like my BG View and that I am say­ing ex­act­ly what they want to, but they pre­fer to re­main silent for fear of the pub­lic at­tack that will fol­low be­cause of the PNM and UNC trolls on so­cial me­dia or di­rect­ly from the Prime Min­is­ter or his oth­er min­is­ters.

I do not de­ny that it is a re­al con­cern for we have seen a play­book that says if you dis­agree with me or my gov­ern­ment, then you are per­sona non gratis and the weight of the State must be trained on you.

It is a kind of self-cen­sor­ship that works for some as they are able to ben­e­fit from gov­ern­ment-pro­mot­ed eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, while qui­et­ly ab­hor­ring the per­for­mance of the rul­ing par­ty or the sense­less­ness of the Op­po­si­tion.

But the time is quick­ly com­ing, if it is not here al­ready, where we will see the er­ror of our ways, be­cause it is on­ly through strong, and more im­por­tant­ly, as­tute and col­lab­o­ra­tive lead­er­ship, that will we have a chance of first dig­ging our­selves out of the eco­nom­ic morass and then look­ing to the fu­ture of an econ­o­my that recog­nis­es our main source of in­come will soon be gone.

I wish I could have said that the de­ci­sions of the Gov­ern­ment have lim­it­ed im­pact on the econ­o­my, as busi­ness­es and en­tre­pre­neurs will do what they have to in an ef­fort to grow and ex­pand their en­ter­pris­es. But in a coun­try where the Gov­ern­ment and its state en­ter­pris­es squeeze the life out of the pri­vate sec­tor and do not see them­selves as fa­cil­i­ta­tors of growth, we have a re­al chal­lenge.

Last week, the Cen­tral Bank re­leased its lat­est mon­e­tary pol­i­cy re­port in which it looks at the do­mes­tic and glob­al econ­o­my.

As can be ex­pect­ed, the re­port is slight­ly dat­ed be­cause it fo­cus­es to a large mea­sure on the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my in the fourth quar­ter of 2020. It does, how­ev­er, pro­vide some pre­lim­i­nary da­ta for the first quar­ter in 2021 in terms of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The Cen­tral Bank told us that in the fourth quar­ter of 2020, re­al eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty con­tract­ed by 9.0 per cent (year-on-year). The en­er­gy sec­tor was hard­est hit, falling by 20.9 per cent due to broad-based con­trac­tions, while ac­tiv­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor slipped by 2.2 per cent.

Dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2020, nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­straints and, to a less­er ex­tent, the damp­en­ing ef­fect of the pan­dem­ic on de­mand for en­er­gy prod­ucts, led to dou­ble-dig­it de­clines in ac­tiv­i­ty through­out the do­mes­tic val­ue chain.

The Cen­tral Bank not­ed that the min­ing and quar­ry­ing sec­tor reg­is­tered a 19.3 per cent year-on-year de­cline, with nat­ur­al gas and crude oil pro­duc­tion con­tract­ing by 27.5 per cent and 5.0 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

The de­clines in the up­stream en­er­gy sec­tor, it said, im­pact­ed the May 2020 - May 2021 Re­fin­ing sub-sec­tor, where ac­tiv­i­ty fell by 39.7 per cent due to a 42.4 per cent col­lapse in liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) pro­duc­tion and a 29.9 per cent fall in pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGLs).

Un­cer­tain­ties sur­round­ing the con­tin­ued sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas to At­lantic LNG’s Train 1, giv­en that its long-term con­tract (20-year) end­ed in 2019, ex­ac­er­bat­ed the de­cline in ac­tiv­i­ty in the LNG in­dus­try dur­ing the fourth quar­ter.

It said: “Da­ta for the first four months of 2021 point­ed to a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in en­er­gy out­put com­pared to the same pe­ri­od of 2020. Nat­ur­al gas out­put be­tween Jan­u­ary to April 2021 de­clined by 20.6 per cent.

The de­cline in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion fil­tered through to the mid­stream sec­tor, with NGLs and LNG pro­duc­tion falling by 22.3 per cent and 37.5 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly. The large drop in LNG out­put came about as the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas re­sult­ed in At­lantic Train 1 be­ing tak­en down at the end of De­cem­ber 2020.”

To be clear, the con­tin­ued lock­downs caused by the COVID-19 virus and the rel­a­tive­ly low rates of vac­ci­na­tion in T&T are re­spon­si­ble for some of the pain that the econ­o­my has faced in the last year, but the fun­da­men­tals have been weak and there­fore, it is those very fun­da­men­tals that make it so hard to see how we get out of this un­scathed.

What are those fun­da­men­tals? Well first­ly, the en­er­gy sec­tor has been suf­fer­ing from un­der-in­vest­ment caused by the fact that this is a ma­ture province and there­fore the dis­cov­er­ies are not large, as can be seen in oth­er provinces like Guyana.

Sec­ond­ly, the un­der­in­vest­ment dur­ing the 2005-2012 pe­ri­od in nat­ur­al gas ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment has re­sult­ed in ma­jor gas short­ages, the likes of which we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to­day. This has had a knock-on ef­fect on the LNG and petro­chem­i­cal sec­tors, which have al­so suf­fered in re­cent years from low com­mod­i­ty prices and high do­mes­tic gas prices.

The suc­cess of the off­shore sec­tor has al­ways dri­ven the on­shore sec­tor and this has not changed for at least 30 years. In oth­er words, we have not changed the fun­da­men­tals of our econ­o­my.

So, we have a sit­u­a­tion where, in a rel­a­tive­ly high-priced com­modi­ties en­vi­ron­ment, low oil and gas pro­duc­tion means we are un­able to ful­ly ben­e­fit from the up­swing in prices.

In the last 15 years, this coun­try has failed to add any re­al source of new in­come streams and nei­ther the Gov­ern­ment nor the Op­po­si­tion has come to the coun­try to pro­mote a way for­ward.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader’s crude joke of hav­ing four jabs for the econ­o­my, invit­ing us to once again throw mon­ey be­hind the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, is al­most as bad as the quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars the NGC and Gov­ern­ment have thrown down the drain be­hind Train 1.

The con­stant for­ma­tion of com­mit­tees to find so­lu­tions which you then ig­nore and do your own thing, is the play­book of the Gov­ern­ment. The Prime Min­is­ter told a me­dia con­fer­ence that a lot of thought is go­ing in­to build­ing back bet­ter, but he is mum on the progress of the hard work done by the Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee.

We need the kind of lead­er­ship that will show us the way for­ward at a time when the world pre­pares to meet in the UK to be even more bold on the cli­mate agen­da. We must have lead­er­ship that al­lows our coun­try to not just play its part in achiev­ing the net ze­ro car­bon goals but helps us ac­cept life be­yond oil and gas.

Lead­er­ship that lets us know there are oth­er in­dus­tries that we can de­vel­op so that the CSEC and SEA stu­dents have a chance to live in a coun­try that can give them a fu­ture and not one that leads to a fall in the present stan­dard of liv­ing as is pre­dict­ed in the Jupiter study.

We need lead­er­ship that is se­ri­ous about pen­sion re­form, about al­low­ing the pri­vate sec­tor to lead the growth, about do­ing the hard work of eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion and one that does not see the be all and end all of pol­i­tics as be­ing elect­ed to of­fice.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored