Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor, News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says glob­al in­sta­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing con­flict in the Mid­dle East, is ac­cel­er­at­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery rather than de­rail­ing it, as the Gov­ern­ment push­es ahead with an en­er­gy-led growth strat­e­gy and wider eco­nom­ic re­forms.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view at the At­lantic Coun­cil stu­dios in Wash­ing­ton, Tan­coo said ris­ing en­er­gy prices have cre­at­ed an un­ex­pect­ed boost in rev­enues, al­low­ing the coun­try to move faster to­wards its de­vel­op­ment tar­gets.

“Well, I think the re­gion­al de­vel­op­ments, in­ter­na­tion­al glob­al de­vel­op­ments have, in fact, giv­en Trinidad and To­ba­go an op­por­tu­ni­ty. I don’t see it as some­thing neg­a­tive, but it’s a mixed bless­ing,” he said.

He added, “What is hap­pen­ing as a re­sult, though, is that we are see­ing a blip, an up­ward move­ment in rev­enues, over and above what we ex­pect­ed.”

Tan­coo said those de­vel­op­ments have ef­fec­tive­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic plans.

“There­fore, all that hap­pened is in Mid­dle East events, which would have giv­en up the in­creased rev­enue as it were, sim­ply meant that we would get to our goal faster. We would get to the de­vel­op­ment of the eco­nom­ic sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the en­er­gy sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar, a bit faster than what we had ini­tial­ly planned and pro­ject­ed go­ing for­ward. We re­main true to the path, we’re just get­ting there faster.”

He con­tin­ued, “Again, like I said, what is hap­pen­ing now on the world scale is just go­ing to im­prove the speed at which we will de­vel­op.”

Tan­coo ex­plained that while Trinidad and To­ba­go did not an­tic­i­pate geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready been pur­su­ing ex­pand­ed en­er­gy pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with ma­jor play­ers such as Exxon­Mo­bil and Shell, along­side deep­wa­ter drilling ini­tia­tives.

He said the orig­i­nal pro­jec­tion was for the en­er­gy sec­tor to strength­en be­tween 2027 and 2028, but high­er glob­al prices have brought for­ward those gains.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter warned that the same glob­al pres­sures could dri­ve in­fla­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly through in­creased ship­ping costs and im­port prices.

To counter this, he said the Gov­ern­ment is fo­cus­ing on boost­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, im­prov­ing tax col­lec­tion, strength­en­ing the Board of In­land Rev­enue, and ex­pand­ing sup­port for man­u­fac­tur­ers through the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Tan­coo out­lined a broad eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy cen­tred on fis­cal dis­ci­pline and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, with tar­get­ed growth in agri­cul­ture, tourism, man­u­fac­tur­ing, dig­i­tal ser­vices, and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

“We are in­vest­ing in peo­ple and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” he said, point­ing to ex­pand­ed train­ing pro­grammes de­signed to sup­port emerg­ing in­dus­tries.

On crime, Tan­coo said eco­nom­ic and so­cial pol­i­cy must go hand in hand, re­veal­ing that the coun­try record­ed a 42 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders over the past year due to in­creased polic­ing and job cre­ation ef­forts.

He ar­gued that crime, em­ploy­ment, and in­vest­ment are close­ly linked, and called for in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to fac­tor such in­di­ca­tors in­to their as­sess­ments.

At meet­ings with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and the World Bank, Tan­coo said there is grow­ing recog­ni­tion that tra­di­tion­al met­rics like GDP per capi­ta do not ful­ly cap­ture the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of small is­land states.

He urged mul­ti­lat­er­al in­sti­tu­tions to con­sid­er cli­mate risk, in­equal­i­ty, crime, and ex­ter­nal “spillover ef­fects” from ma­jor economies when de­sign­ing sup­port frame­works.

Turn­ing to pub­lic fi­nances, Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly man­ag­ing debt while work­ing to ex­pand GDP. He re­vealed that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­cent­ly raised US$1 bil­lion on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets to re­fi­nance ex­ist­ing oblig­a­tions, part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to im­prove the debt-to-GDP ra­tio.

He al­so high­light­ed a “re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion blue­print” of 15 projects aimed at dri­ving job cre­ation and at­tract­ing in­vest­ment, not­ing that the ini­tia­tive has al­ready gen­er­at­ed 965 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est from lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors.

On dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, Tan­coo said the coun­try is mov­ing to close a decade-long gap in tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing the roll­out of lap­tops in schools and new leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late vir­tu­al as­sets.

He point­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of a min­istry fo­cused on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence as ev­i­dence of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­tent to mod­ernise the econ­o­my.

“We are tak­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go a leap for­ward in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry,” he said.

Tan­coo al­so reaf­firmed the coun­try’s open for­eign pol­i­cy stance as it re­lates to trade and in­vest­ments, main­tain­ing strong re­la­tion­ships with ma­jor part­ners, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, while re­main­ing open to in­vest­ment from all coun­tries.

“We re­main open for busi­ness. Wher­ev­er the busi­ness comes from, we will en­gage,” he said.