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.