The Roadmap com­mit­tee, ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to come up with short-term plans to get the econ­o­my go­ing and long-term strate­gies to make it more ef­fi­cient and re­silient, is ex­pect­ed to present its ini­tial re­port by the end of the week.

Once again the coun­try has se­lect­ed some of its most tal­ent­ed cit­i­zens to come up with so­lu­tions to fi­nal­ly pro­pel T&T for­ward and al­low all of us, and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to live in a coun­try that we all know is pos­si­ble.

One in which there is pros­per­i­ty, law and or­der, good gov­er­nance, re­spect for each oth­er, high­ly-trained and mo­ti­vat­ed cit­i­zens, with all the struc­tures in place for peo­ple to achieve their full po­ten­tial. It will nev­er be utopia and our strate­gies will have to be re­fined as time pass­es but what will not change is the need for fo­cus, tenac­i­ty and dis­ci­pline. With­out these and the req­ui­site lead­er­ship, we will be spin­ning the prover­bial top in mud.

If we had any doubt about the need to chart a new course and make or econ­o­my more sus­tain­able was the news on Tues­day that the Cana­di­an-owned petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, Nu­trien Ltd. will be shut­ting down one of its am­mo­nia plants in T&T for a min­i­mum of three months.

In a news re­lease, the com­pa­ny said it had made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly shut down one of the four am­mo­nia (NH3) plants at its Trinidad fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Nu­trien, the tem­po­rary shut­down is in re­sponse to the cur­rent mar­ket price of am­mo­nia.

“We ex­pect the shut­down to last for a min­i­mum of three months. We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor mar­ket con­di­tions go­ing for­ward as we as­sess any fur­ther changes in pro­duc­tion,” the re­lease end­ed.

This is the third petro­chem­i­cal plant to shut down on the es­tate in the last six months with Yara shut­ting its doors for good and Methanex not pro­duc­ing at its Ti­tan plant af­ter fail­ing to reach an agree­ment with the NGC on a new nat­ur­al gas price.

It’s an­oth­er dag­ger in the heart of T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, which has been strug­gling for the last five years un­der low com­mod­i­ty prices and the con­comi­tant rel­a­tive­ly high prices for nat­ur­al gas, the main feed­stock in the pro­duc­tion of methanol, am­mo­nia and urea and a short­age of gas sup­ply.

I am not one of those who ar­gue that we should not fo­cus on the en­er­gy sec­tor but rather on the need to di­ver­si­fy away from the sec­tor.

I think the op­po­site is what is re­quired. We need to fix the en­er­gy sec­tor. We need to find a way to en­sure our nat­ur­al gas prices are com­pet­i­tive and it al­lows us to com­pete with shale gas.

We need to think about whether we can go fur­ther down­stream of these petro­chem­i­cal plants and link it to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

We must un­der­stand that un­like what some may feel T&T re­mains a world-class oil and gas province and we have to go af­ter the oil and gas now, while it still has val­ue notwith­stand­ing re­cent events in the USA with West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate prices.

That means an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the search and de­vel­op­ment of crude oil both on land and off­shore. We must en­sure that we get the above the ground mea­sures right and staff the Min­istry of En­er­gy with the right tal­ent and pay them salaries that are com­pet­i­tive so we can re­tain that tal­ent to work in the in­ter­est of T&T.

This must be done while ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing all the oth­er av­enues to di­ver­si­fy from oil and gas, in the process en­sur­ing max­i­mum re­turns.

Co-chair of the Roadmap com­mit­tee and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte said the short-term ob­jec­tive of the re­port will be about how to jump-start the econ­o­my with a fo­cus on cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing jobs, in­creas­ing ag­gre­gate de­mand, in­creas­ing spend­ing in the econ­o­my, in­creas­ing ag­gre­gate sup­ply, en­hanc­ing and deal­ing with the so­cial pro­grammes, so that no one is left be­hind.

The com­mit­tee’s vice-chair said the coun­try al­so had to look at oth­er ar­eas of rev­enue since core earn­ings were in­suf­fi­cient to main­tain T&T’s cur­rent lifestyle. He was quick to add that if the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty was able to en­sure that the 200,000 peo­ple who are not to­day pay­ing tax­es were to pay their fair share, there will be enough mon­ey for the coun­try to func­tion.

If Mr Le Hunte’s num­bers are cor­rect and 30 per cent of the work­force is not pay­ing tax­es and if as the gov­ern­ment says the lost rev­enue is es­ti­mat­ed at $15 bil­lion—or al­most 10 per cent of GDP—then there is no doubt that the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty has to come in­to ef­fect soon­er rather than lat­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance web­site the TTRA will be a gov­ern­ment agency, which will be re­spon­si­ble for the col­lec­tion of gov­ern­ment rev­enue and the pro­vi­sion of oth­er ser­vices for the pro­tec­tion of gov­ern­ment rev­enue, in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion of tax eva­sion, the con­duct of au­dits and bor­der pro­tec­tion.

The TTRA will sub­sume the pow­ers, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and func­tions of the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act and all oth­er rel­e­vant rev­enue leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so tak­en a de­ci­sion that all staff in the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion will tran­si­tion from their re­spec­tive po­si­tions to the TTRA at terms and con­di­tions, no less favourable than those that they cur­rent­ly en­joy, if they so de­sire. That means that any mem­ber of staff who de­sires to tran­si­tion to the TTRA will be guar­an­teed a po­si­tion in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. One ob­jec­tive of the TTRA is to bet­ter com­pen­sate, in­cen­tivise, train and equip staff to ex­e­cute their du­ties more ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, the web­site boasts.

Faced with con­sis­tent deficits since 2014 and with the re­al­i­ty that the high oil prices of 2007 to 2014 are over, the coun­try can­not con­tin­ue to bleed mon­ey like this.

It is in­her­ent­ly un­fair and wrong that in­di­vid­u­als, busi­ness­es, pro­fes­sion­als and the rest who do not pay their share of tax­es con­tin­ue to place all the bur­den for the run­ning of the coun­try on the shoul­ders of so few.

There is a kind of smart­man­ism that pre­vails in the so­ci­ety that al­lows some to feel that gam­ing the sys­tem makes them a hero and how does that dif­fer from those who feel they can use graft to take from the state what is not due to them?

What the dis­cus­sion should be about is not if the TTRA should be es­tab­lished but en­sur­ing that it meets its ob­jec­tives and im­por­tant­ly mak­ing sure that the ad­di­tion­al rev­enue that goes to the gov­ern­ment is not wast­ed and frit­tered away.

This coun­try has a lot of chal­lenges and the TTRA is not go­ing to solve them all but it will give us a fight­ing chance to at least meet our ex­pen­di­ture pro­file. It is for this rea­son that I can­not fath­om why the UNC, who pur­ports to want to re­turn to pow­er, does not want to pass the leg­is­la­tion that will help them should they as­sume of­fice?

For those of us who have more years be­hind us than ahead of us this kind of ze­ro sum pol­i­tics is what we have seen for way too long and which has us, a decade lat­er, still un­able to pass the TTRA bill.

In this time of re­set we must pass the bill. We fail to do so at our own per­il.