An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt


Bar­ba­di­an econ­o­mist Je­re­my Stephen be­lieves not re­new­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) could give in­vestors a rea­son to take an­oth­er look at Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the coun­try moves away from more than six months of emer­gency pow­ers and to­wards the longer-term chal­lenge of cre­at­ing a more sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness and in­vest­ment.

“Re­leas­ing or re­mov­ing or lift­ing a state of emer­gency would sig­nal to in­vestors, who may be in­ter­est­ed that maybe it’s time to give an­oth­er se­ri­ous look at in­vest­ing ag­gres­sive­ly in T&T,” Stephen told Busi­ness Guardian.

The SoE, de­clared on March 3, is set to ex­pire on Sep­tem­ber 17, bring­ing an end to the lat­est pe­ri­od of emer­gency mea­sures.

For Stephen, the re­moval of the ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures mat­ters not on­ly from a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive but al­so be­cause of the sig­nal it sends to busi­ness­es and po­ten­tial in­vestors.

“Any state of emer­gency, even if it’s used as a po­lit­i­cal tool, gives a sig­nal to in­vestors that maybe it’s time just to sit back a bit and not be as ag­gres­sive with their in­vest­ment plans.”

The econ­o­mist be­lieves the con­tin­ued use of emer­gency pow­ers can cre­ate a pause in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when busi­ness­es and in­vestors are as­sess­ing the lev­el of risk as­so­ci­at­ed with op­er­at­ing in a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket.

“States of emer­gency on­ly cause the econ­o­my to pause, in a sense,” Stephen added.

The end of the SoE there­fore comes at a point when the Gov­ern­ment will have to demon­strate that pub­lic or­der can be main­tained with­out a con­tin­u­a­tion of ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures, while busi­ness­es look for greater cer­tain­ty around the op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

A sig­nal to in­vestors

Stephen al­so fo­cused on the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty gen­er­at­ed af­ter nor­mal busi­ness hours, ar­gu­ing that the night-time econ­o­my forms an im­por­tant part of the coun­try’s com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Late-night ac­tiv­i­ty, which to my es­ti­ma­tion is a healthy part of the Trinida­di­an econ­o­my and I should re­al­ly spec­i­fy that I mean late-night le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, par­ties, lay­men, what­ev­er con­sti­tutes and sup­ports those ac­tiv­i­ties, dri­ves the Trinida­di­an econ­o­my in a sig­nif­i­cant man­ner.”

His com­ments come as busi­ness­es across sec­tors con­tin­ue to nav­i­gate crime, op­er­at­ing costs and un­cer­tain­ty, with the night-time econ­o­my among the ar­eas af­fect­ed by per­cep­tions of pub­lic safe­ty.

The re­moval of the SoE does not, how­ev­er, mean the wider con­cerns sur­round­ing crime and in­vestor con­fi­dence dis­ap­pear.

Stephen point­ed to the mur­der fig­ures as one mea­sure that would con­tin­ue to shape per­cep­tions of se­cu­ri­ty.

As of Sep­tem­ber 14, there had been 266 mur­ders record­ed in 2026, com­pared with 255 at the same point in 2025. Sep­tem­ber had record­ed 14 mur­ders as of that date, com­pared with 11 dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

Stephen de­scribed the dif­fer­ence as rel­a­tive­ly small.

“If it’s mur­ders, then yeah, that’s a mar­gin­al im­prove­ment,” he said. “In­signif­i­cant, to be hon­est, be­cause you would need to check years be­fore 2025 to make a fair com­par­i­son.”

The com­par­i­son comes against a back­drop of a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in the an­nu­al mur­der toll last year.

T&T record­ed 369 mur­ders in 2025, down from 626 in 2024. The 2025 fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed a 42 per cent re­duc­tion and was the coun­try’s low­est an­nu­al mur­der to­tal since 2014.

Stephen ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of every life saved while cau­tion­ing against draw­ing broad con­clu­sions from a rel­a­tive­ly small move­ment in the year-to-date fig­ures.

“As with any preser­va­tion of life, let me say this cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, any preser­va­tion of life is want­ed and war­rant­ed, but 11 doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly say that you’ve done some­thing re­mark­able.”

He be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment must al­so com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly about what the emer­gency mea­sures were in­tend­ed to ac­com­plish.

“The gov­ern­ment needs to com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly what the SOE was meant to achieve,” Stephen added.

That ques­tion be­comes more sig­nif­i­cant as the coun­try moves from emer­gency polic­ing pow­ers back to nor­mal law-en­force­ment arrange­ments.

The cur­rent SOE pro­vid­ed ad­di­tion­al pow­ers re­lat­ing to search, ar­rest and de­ten­tion, al­though it did not im­pose a gen­er­al cur­few.

The Gov­ern­ment has main­tained that the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures have con­tributed to im­proved pub­lic safe­ty, while po­lice of­fi­cials have al­so point­ed to in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing and oth­er law-en­force­ment work when dis­cussing the de­cline in mur­ders.

The dif­fer­ing ex­pla­na­tions place re­newed at­ten­tion on what hap­pens af­ter the SoE ends.

Crime and the cost of do­ing busi­ness

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon be­lieves emer­gency pow­ers should re­main ex­cep­tion­al rather than be­com­ing a re­cur­ring fea­ture of the coun­try’s re­sponse to crime.

“A prop­er­ly run coun­try should use things like SOEs, states of emer­gency, in very rare sit­u­a­tions. Very rare sit­u­a­tions,” Ramkissoon told Busi­ness Guardian.

His con­cern ex­tends be­yond the im­me­di­ate se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions to the ef­fect that re­peat­ed emer­gency mea­sures can have on eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and per­cep­tions of the coun­try.

“What we want to aim for is a sit­u­a­tion in which crime is un­der con­trol.”

Ramkissoon be­lieves busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly those de­pen­dent on cus­tomer move­ment and ac­tiv­i­ty in com­mer­cial dis­tricts, ben­e­fit from an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple feel com­fort­able go­ing about their dai­ly lives.

“The busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment can do with­out ZOSOs (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) and states of emer­gency, es­pe­cial­ly the re­tail as­pect of the busi­ness.”

He point­ed to the wider con­se­quences of main­tain­ing a cli­mate of height­ened se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ven­tion.

“I think that an en­vi­ron­ment that has suc­ces­sive states of emer­gency, a so­ci­ety and econ­o­my does not want that kind of at­mos­phere,” he said. “It is bad for busi­ness. It is bad for the av­er­age per­son go­ing about their busi­ness in a mall, on the street. It is bad for tourism.”

For busi­ness­es, the is­sue is not lim­it­ed to whether cus­tomers turn up.

Crime can al­so in­crease the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with se­cu­ri­ty, in­sur­ance, lo­gis­tics, staffing, and oth­er as­pects of com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions.

“Busi­ness­es un­der­stand risk and the riski­er the en­vi­ron­ment, the more cost­ly the goods and ser­vices pro­vid­ed to the con­sumer.”

Ramkissoon be­lieves that risk ul­ti­mate­ly af­fects every­one op­er­at­ing with­in the econ­o­my.

“Crime def­i­nite­ly in­creas­es the risks for con­sumers, for clients and for busi­ness­es in the econ­o­my.”

His po­si­tion is that a sus­tain­able im­prove­ment in the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment re­quires more than tem­po­rary se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“We need to ad­dress crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty more holis­ti­cal­ly, in a more ef­fec­tive way, so that there can be greater con­fi­dence at all lev­els by the man in the street, by the con­sumer and by busi­ness­es in the econ­o­my.”

The con­cern is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for sec­tors that de­pend on evening and week­end ac­tiv­i­ty.

Stephen’s com­ments on the night-time econ­o­my high­light the eco­nom­ic chain cre­at­ed by restau­rants, en­ter­tain­ment venues, trans­porta­tion providers, se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, event pro­mot­ers, work­ers and oth­er busi­ness­es that de­pend on cus­tomers be­ing will­ing to spend out­side tra­di­tion­al work­ing hours.

The re­turn to nor­mal con­di­tions could there­fore have im­pli­ca­tions be­yond the for­mal end of the emer­gency mea­sures.

For in­vestors, how­ev­er, se­cu­ri­ty is on­ly one part of the equa­tion.

Be­yond the SoE

A busi­ness­man from east­ern Trinidad, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, of­fered a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the state of the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

“That has noth­ing to do with how my busi­ness is run­ning, be­cause the busi­ness is be­ing suf­fo­cat­ed every which way,” he said.

His con­cerns cen­tred more heav­i­ly on crime and broad­er weak­ness­es in law en­force­ment and oth­er ar­eas of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Not from the busi­ness point of view, but from the crim­i­nal as­pects and the amount of crime that’s go­ing on and con­tin­u­ing to go on.”

The busi­ness­man be­lieves there are sev­er­al ar­eas re­quir­ing at­ten­tion be­yond the use of emer­gency pow­ers.

“There are so many oth­er things in law en­force­ment, and stuff that needs, and ed­u­ca­tion that needs to be fixed.”

He ques­tioned whether the fo­cus should be placed pri­mar­i­ly on ar­rests.

“That should be their con­cen­tra­tion, rather than just giv­ing free-willy po­lice of­fi­cers the ar­rest they want.”

On in­vest­ment, his as­sess­ment was less op­ti­mistic than Stephen’s view that the end of the SoE could en­cour­age in­vestors to re­con­sid­er T&T.

“The state of the econ­o­my, whether it’s SOE or not, I don’t think very many in­vestors want to come in­to this coun­try any­way.”

He al­so raised con­cerns about the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

“But there’s no such thing as ease of do­ing busi­ness in this coun­try. Ab­solute­ly none.”

The busi­ness­man point­ed to in­ter­ac­tions be­tween com­pa­nies and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies as an area where he be­lieves busi­ness­es face un­nec­es­sary de­lays and pro­ce­dures.

“Every­thing that is to do with the gov­ern­ment, which has to do in turn with busi­ness, is 10 steps more than nec­es­sary.”

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so placed con­sid­er­able em­pha­sis on the de­cline in mur­ders.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has point­ed to the down­ward move­ment in crime fig­ures while de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to pub­lic safe­ty.

“The num­bers are down, down, down in every re­gard, in every di­vi­sion,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters last week. “Num­bers don’t lie.”