There are two things that this coun­try tends to shy away from, the first is im­ple­ment­ing plans and the sec­ond is em­brac­ing busi­ness and the pri­vate sec­tor.

The truth is even be­fore in­de­pen­dence the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was viewed with scep­ti­cism. They were seen as an ex­ten­sion of the planter class and lat­er on as for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day in­fa­mous­ly re­ferred to them as the par­a­sitic oli­garchy.

Over the years the gov­ern­ment has seen it­self as the dri­ver of growth in the econ­o­my, of the view that if it does not act the busi­ness sec­tor lacks ei­ther the will, the abil­i­ty or the req­ui­site en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it to move the econ­o­my for­ward.

Sup­port­ers of this ap­proach have of­ten point­ed to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate as an ex­am­ple of how gov­ern­ment ac­tion has led to sig­nif­i­cant out­comes for the econ­o­my and the peo­ple of T&T. They have al­so point­ed to the in­ter­ven­tion by gov­ern­ment in the oil in­dus­try which saved thou­sands of jobs and com­mu­ni­ties in South and South West Trinidad and even in ar­eas like tourism with the own­er­ship of the Hilton, Mag­dale­na, and Hy­att Re­gency ho­tels.

These are all pow­er­ful ex­am­ples but the do not paint the whole sto­ry, they do not tell of the en­tre­pre­neur­ship of the Cli­co Group which along with its Ger­man part­ners en­sured a home-grown com­pa­ny be­came one of the world’s largest methanol pro­duc­ers. It does not tell the sto­ry of As­so­ci­at­ed Brands, An­gos­tu­ra nor SM Jaleel nor the many oth­er com­pa­nies that have con­quered the Caribbean mar­ket and are mak­ing a push in­to Latin Amer­i­ca.

This dis­trust of busi­ness has in part guid­ed gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and at­ti­tude and it is what con­tributes to the coun­try’s in­abil­i­ty to achieve its eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial.

Take, for in­stance, the man­age­ment by the present ad­min­is­tra­tion of the re­open­ing ex­er­cise. There ap­pears to be in­creas­ing­ly a re­ver­sion to the mean with this ad­min­is­tra­tion, hav­ing done a great job ini­tial­ly, it has re­turned to what may be ex­pect­ed and per­haps it was too much to ex­pect con­tin­ued thought and com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the han­dling of the pan­dem­ic.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s bi-week­ly news con­fer­ences in which he picks the win­ners and losers in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has caused dam­age to many sec­tors, not the least of which are those op­er­at­ing in en­ter­tain­ment.

From bars to restau­rants to movie the­atres, the pun­ish­ment has been bru­tal. Their vir­tu­al clo­sure as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure for the spread of the COVID-19 virus ap­pears to be in­creas­ing­ly done with­out much thought and cer­tain­ly with­out strat­e­gy.

Prime Min­is­ter, no one can ar­gue with you that your first pri­or­i­ty is to keep the peo­ple of T&T safe. You and your gov­ern­ment have done a rel­a­tive­ly good job at that. Thus far the health sys­tem has stood up to the chal­lenge un­like many in the de­vel­oped world that have failed. It is al­so true that the risk of catch­ing the COVID-19 virus in­creas­es in­doors and in places like bars where so­cial dis­tanc­ing and, more im­por­tant­ly, per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ap­pear to be in short­er sup­ply.

But you can­not con­tin­ue to vir­tu­al­ly shut down the place, keep peo­ple out of work, put more busi­ness­es at risk, en­sure that more peo­ple loose their in­vest­ment be­cause you can­not trust peo­ple to have per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and be­cause the bars and restau­rants are more risky than oth­er ar­eas.

Prime Min­is­ter if we are hon­est about the sec­ond wave, the one that helped us move from spo­radic to clus­ter to com­mu­ni­ty spread, it had a lot to do with your ac­tions, that of your col­leagues, your par­ty and that of the Op­po­si­tion.

Let us not for­get, this ma­jor in­crease start­ed dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign and con­tin­ued un­abat­ed un­til the sec­ond lock­down. No amount of point­ing to the last lap of beach go­ers will con­vince a thought­ful pop­u­la­tion of a lack of cul­pa­bil­i­ty by po­lit­i­cal par­ties and their sup­port­ers.

You open gyms but say no crick­et, does that make sense? You say cin­e­mas can re­sume op­er­a­tion at 50 per cent but no eat­ing in the movie the­atre. You ask bars and restau­rants for guide­lines to re­open they go be­yond you own sug­ges­tions and you say an­oth­er two weeks. You had ini­tial­ly said tours of the Buc­coo Reef but at that time peo­ple could not go to the beach. Its al­most as if the de­ci­sions are be­ing made on whim and fan­cy and not on a thought process with an em­pha­sis on get­ting busi­ness­es and the econ­o­my safe­ly open. It’s a re­liance on luck and chance. Its al­most like there is a be­lief that COVID-19 helped you re­turn to pow­er and luck will help us nav­i­gate this chal­leng­ing time.

The sec­ond is­sue is about plan­ning and im­ple­ment­ing plans. This week Pro­man Group an­nounced it will join nine oth­er pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor part­ners to mark the launch of the North-C-Methanol project, which will be the largest re­new­able hy­dro­gen-to-methanol com­plex in the world.

Pro­man which has most of its plants lo­cat­ed in T&T dis­closed that the col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ment is for the con­struc­tion of two plants—a 65-MW(one mil­lion watts) elec­trol­yser fed by re­new­able pow­er, and a methanol plant —on the Ro­den­huize penin­su­la of the North Sea Port in Bel­gium.

Pro­man not­ed that to­geth­er, the two plants will form North-C-Methanol, which aims to re­duce an­nu­al CO2 emis­sions by 140,000 tonnes while gen­er­at­ing 44,000 met­ric tonnes of re­new­able methanol.

The com­pa­ny added that this methanol could be used as a feed­stock by the lo­cal chem­i­cal in­dus­try, and as a sus­tain­able fu­el for ships, road ve­hi­cles and trains.

This is an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment and rais­es some im­me­di­ate ques­tions. With so much CO2 avail­able at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate how come we have not tried to cap­ture it, help us meet our Paris agree­ment goals and al­so as­sist in find­ing a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion to the chal­lenges fac­ing the down­stream com­pa­nies.

Both the NGC and its sub­sidiary Na­tion­al En­er­gy have talked about these projects for some time now, and as usu­al there are plans but no ac­tion. It’s no dif­fer­ent from the NGC’s talk about small pool gas and ex­plains why for 14 years Na­tion­al En­er­gy has on­ly de­liv­ered one project in which it gave pref­er­en­tial gas prices to a com­pa­ny that NGC has in­ter­est in.

The coun­try has to get things right, it has to re­open the econ­o­my and im­ple­ment well thought out plans. Fail­ure to do so will lead to the kind of drift we see at the mo­ment.