On Au­gust 31, 2026, Trinidad and To­ba­go marked 64 years of In­de­pen­dence. An­niver­saries in­vite cel­e­bra­tion, but in­de­pen­dence al­so de­mands an ac­count­ing. Af­ter three decades of en­er­gy booms, in­dus­tri­al clo­sures and re­peat­ed promis­es of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, where are we mov­ing as a coun­try? Are we pro­gress­ing or re­gress­ing?

The hon­est an­swer is un­com­fort­able. Com­pared with 1996, Trinidad and To­ba­go is wealth­i­er, and un­em­ploy­ment is much low­er. Com­pared with our own high-wa­ter mark a decade ago, how­ev­er, the econ­o­my has moved back­wards. We cre­at­ed sub­stan­tial progress, but failed to re­new the pro­duc­tive base that fi­nanced it.

The long view proves both sides of that ver­dict. Us­ing World Bank con­stant-price da­ta, re­al GDP per capi­ta in 2025 was more than twice its 1996 lev­el, yet about 19 per cent be­low its 2014 peak. A cal­cu­la­tion from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) lat­est se­ries puts to­tal re­al GDP in 2025 at 17.5 per cent be­low 2014 lev­els; the CSO al­so re­ports a 0.5 per cent con­trac­tion in 2025. The of­fi­cial un­em­ploy­ment rate was 16.3 per cent in 1996; it was 5.4 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2026, al­though labour-force par­tic­i­pa­tion was on­ly 55.1 per cent.

So this is not a sto­ry of un­in­ter­rupt­ed de­cline. It is a sto­ry of progress made, then par­tial­ly sur­ren­dered.

In 1996, pe­tro­le­um still an­chored the econ­o­my, but the great nat­ur­al-gas trans­for­ma­tion was gath­er­ing force, gas-fed am­mo­nia and methanol plants and, lat­er, a world-scale liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try.

Min­istry of En­er­gy da­ta show nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion ris­ing from 874 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day in 1996 to 4.33 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day in 2010. That ex­pan­sion un­der­pinned for­eign ex­change earn­ings, tax rev­enue, skilled em­ploy­ment and in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture. It helped make the first decade of this cen­tu­ry one of the most pros­per­ous pe­ri­ods since In­de­pen­dence.

But the en­gine was not main­tained. By 2025, gas pro­duc­tion had fall­en to 2.54 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day, 41 per cent be­low its 2010 peak. Crude oil and con­den­sate out­put fell even more sharply, from 128,723 bar­rels per day in 1996 to 53,782 bar­rels per day in 2025, a de­cline of 58 per cent. Those num­bers are not po­lit­i­cal rhetoric; they are phys­i­cal ev­i­dence of a shrink­ing re­source base and in­suf­fi­cient re­place­ment.

The con­se­quences now run through the down­stream sec­tor. In the Min­istry’s of­fi­cial 2025 pe­tro­le­um bul­letin, no re­fin­ery through­put or out­put was record­ed through­out the year. By Au­gust 21, 2026, the Gov­ern­ment was still en­gag­ing prospec­tive in­vestors and gath­er­ing da­ta. A Ju­ly up­date had promised a clear roadmap by year-end.

Mean­while, Methanex’s Ti­tan methanol plant ceased op­er­a­tions on Ju­ly 15 and en­tered in­def­i­nite idling. At­las was al­ready idle.

This does not mean every old as­set should be re­vived at any cost. A re­fin­ery is not valu­able sim­ply be­cause it is his­toric. It should restart on­ly if re­li­able feed­stock, mar­kets, pri­vate cap­i­tal, en­vi­ron­men­tal li­a­bil­i­ties and op­er­at­ing eco­nom­ics with­stand in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny. Nos­tal­gia can­not be the busi­ness mod­el and tax­pay­ers can­not again be­come the fi­nancier of last re­sort.

The same dis­ci­pline is need­ed when dis­cussing sug­ar. Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed once con­nect­ed es­tates, fac­to­ries, vil­lages and thou­sands of fam­i­lies to a na­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­my. Its clo­sure left eco­nom­ic and so­cial scars that are still vis­i­ble. Yet ro­man­ti­cis­ing Ca­roni ob­scures why re­form be­came un­avoid­able. The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), re­port­ed that the com­pa­ny was los­ing about one per cent of GDP an­nu­al­ly, had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debt equiv­a­lent to six per cent of GDP by the end of 2003 and had sep­a­rat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,000 em­ploy­ees.

Clos­ing a per­sis­tent­ly loss-mak­ing en­ter­prise was not, by it­self, na­tion­al re­gres­sion. The deep­er fail­ure was what fol­lowed: We did not con­vert Ca­roni’s land, ir­ri­ga­tion po­ten­tial, skills and agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties in­to a com­pet­i­tive food and agro-pro­cess­ing plat­form of com­pa­ra­ble scale.

The Brechin Cas­tle Agro-Pro­cess­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, in­au­gu­rat­ed in May 2026, is a wel­come move. But one fa­cil­i­ty, opened more than two decades af­ter re­struc­tur­ing, al­so mea­sures the de­lay be­tween promise and pro­duc­tive trans­for­ma­tion.

The Pitch Lake re­quires an­oth­er cor­rec­tion. T&T has not lost this as­set. Lake As­phalt of Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains a state-owned com­pa­ny that mines, process­es, mar­kets and ex­ports Trinidad Lake As­phalt. The prob­lem is the un­der­de­vel­op­ment of the val­ue chain.

Since the Petrotrin re­fin­ery closed, the coun­try has im­port­ed re­fin­ery bi­tu­men to blend with its own nat­ur­al as­phalt for road-paving prod­ucts. Few facts cap­ture our predica­ment more vivid­ly: We pos­sess one of the world’s best-known nat­ur­al as­phalt de­posits, yet must im­port a pe­tro­le­um in­put for­mer­ly pro­duced do­mes­ti­cal­ly to turn more of it in­to road ma­te­r­i­al.

Our na­tion­al bal­ance sheet con­firms the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion since the mid-2010s. Gross of­fi­cial re­serves stood at US$11.5 bil­lion, or 13.2 months of im­ports, in 2014. By 2025, they were about US$5.4 bil­lion, cov­er­ing 6.1 months. Pub­lic-sec­tor debt was es­ti­mat­ed at 84.2 per cent of GDP in 2025. En­er­gy ac­count­ed for on­ly about 21 per cent of GDP, yet en­er­gy re­ceipts sup­plied near­ly 37 per cent of to­tal bud­getary rev­enue. We are there­fore less en­er­gy-in­ten­sive than be­fore, but in­suf­fi­cient­ly di­ver­si­fied in the ar­eas that mat­ter most: ex­ports, for­eign ex­change and pub­lic rev­enue.

Nor should we ig­nore what still works. The Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund held as­sets equal to about 24.5 per cent of GDP in 2025 and the coun­try re­tains ports, in­dus­tri­al es­tates, en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, en­gi­neer­ing ex­per­tise and an ed­u­cat­ed work­force. These are gen­uine ad­van­tages.

Yet buffers can dis­guise de­te­ri­o­ra­tion if with­drawals and bor­row­ing pre­serve con­sump­tion rather than fi­nance tran­si­tion. A coun­try can re­main sol­vent even as it be­comes less pro­duc­tive.

Progress must be judged by whether each gen­er­a­tion ex­pands, not mere­ly by whether it spends the pro­duc­tive in­her­i­tance.

That dis­tinc­tion is es­sen­tial. A larg­er non-en­er­gy share of GDP does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean suc­cess­ful di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion if much of it cir­cu­lates in­come gen­er­at­ed by en­er­gy, re­lies heav­i­ly on im­ports, or pro­duces too lit­tle for­eign ex­change. Gen­uine di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion must be mea­sured by new ex­ports, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, in­vest­ment, in­no­va­tion and re­silient jobs, not mere­ly by the num­ber of sec­tors named in a bud­get speech.

At 64, there­fore, the right ques­tion is not whether we can recre­ate 1970s sug­ar or 2000s gas. We can­not gov­ern by rear-view mir­ror. The ques­tion is whether we can con­vert the as­sets and ca­pa­bil­i­ties we still pos­sess in­to the next pro­duc­tive econ­o­my.

That re­quires five dis­ci­plines:

Pub­lish trans­par­ent com­mer­cial tests and dead­lines for the re­fin­ery, with no open-end­ed pub­lic sub­sidy;

Turn for­mer Ca­roni lands in­to ti­tle-se­cure, ir­ri­gat­ed clus­ters tied to agro-proces­sors, su­per­mar­kets and ex­port mar­kets;

Treat Trinidad Lake As­phalt as a pre­mi­um na­tion­al prod­uct by in­vest­ing in re­search, spe­cialised for­mu­la­tions, mar­ket­ing and the pub­li­ca­tion of pro­duc­tion and ex­port tar­gets;

Ac­cel­er­ate gas in­vest­ment while recog­nis­ing that projects such as Man­a­tee are bridges to tran­si­tion, not sub­sti­tutes for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion; and

Adopt a cred­i­ble fis­cal rule that saves wind­falls, re­strains re­cur­rent spend­ing and re­builds re­serves.

This is not sim­ply an eco­nom­ic pro­gramme. It is the prac­ti­cal mean­ing of sov­er­eign­ty in a small, open, re­source-de­pen­dent econ­o­my such as ours to­day.

Along­side en­er­gy, the coun­try must scale sec­tors ca­pa­ble of earn­ing for­eign ex­change: mar­itime ser­vices, spe­cialised man­u­fac­tur­ing, dig­i­tal and cre­ative ex­ports, tourism, food pro­duc­tion and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

The Gov­ern­ment’s role is not to se­lect an­oth­er gi­ant State en­ter­prise, but to de­liv­er re­li­able in­fra­struc­ture, faster ap­provals, trans­par­ent pro­cure­ment, ac­cess to fi­nance, com­pet­i­tive util­i­ties and an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem aligned with the work we want to at­tract.

The em­pir­i­cal ver­dict is clear. Over the past 30 years, T&T has pro­gressed. Over rough­ly the last decade, we re­gressed. We are rich­er than in 1996, but poor­er than our 2014 po­ten­tial; less un­em­ployed, but still too de­pen­dent; en­dowed with as­sets, but weak at con­vert­ing them in­to sus­tained pro­duc­tion.

In­de­pen­dence is more than own­er­ship of re­sources. It is the ca­pac­i­ty to re­new them, re­place de­clin­ing in­dus­tries, and make time­ly de­ci­sions be­fore a cri­sis makes them for us. At 64, our great­est dan­ger is not that the old econ­o­my has end­ed. It is that the new one re­mains un­fin­ished.