As Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proach­es the 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion of­ten seems more com­fort­able cat­a­logu­ing our fail­ures than mea­sur­ing our achieve­ments. We cur­rent­ly face a num­ber of chal­lenges as nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has fall­en, parts of Point Lisas are idle, house­holds re­main on wa­ter sched­ules, roads are in a state of dis­re­pair and too many pub­lic in­vest­ments have failed to de­liv­er what was promised.

There is a time and place for every­thing so on the eve of In­de­pen­dence Day lets ex­plore what an in­de­pen­dent T&T man­aged to build, and how those ac­com­plish­ments can help us move for­ward.

We have shut down a lot of things in­her­it­ed from the colo­nial days, from a train net­work to sug­ar and oil re­fin­ing but we al­so cre­at­ed and de­vel­oped quite a bit. We can boast of an in­dus­tri­al plat­form un­usu­al for a coun­try of our size and this is some­thing we take for grant­ed.

Last week, I ar­gued that we can no longer com­pete prin­ci­pal­ly on cheap nat­ur­al gas. Pro­duc­tion is rough­ly 37 per cent be­low its 2015 lev­el and the Unit­ed States shale rev­o­lu­tion has changed the eco­nom­ics of am­mo­nia, urea and methanol. Some of our old in­dus­tri­al ad­van­tages have weak­ened but there are sig­nif­i­cant sources of op­por­tu­ni­ty that re­main.

I want to start with an irony by dis­cussing the is­sue of med­ical tourism. T&T has po­si­tioned the idea for the bet­ter part of two decades with­out any re­al ex­e­cu­tion. By 2012, med­ical tourism was be­ing ex­plic­it­ly dis­cussed and a na­tion­al med­ical tourism strat­e­gy was be­ing de­vel­oped. This hap­pened while our pub­lic health­care sys­tem was strug­gling with wait­ing times, staffing short­ages and un­even ac­cess.

I don’t re­call peo­ple say­ing we shouldn’t pur­sue this ven­ture be­cause lo­cals lack ac­cess to pub­lic hos­pi­tal beds. In fact many saw it as help­ing to im­prove our lo­cal health care in­fra­struc­ture and wel­comed the ini­tia­tive as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn for­eign ex­change and build a broard­er ecosys­tem.

Of course, this on­ly works if the new in­dus­try adds ca­pac­i­ty. If med­ical tourism sim­ply pulls scarce nurs­es and doc­tors from pub­lic hos­pi­tals, it can make mat­ters worse. The ob­jec­tive has to be ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment, train­ing and fa­cil­i­ties, not re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of the same short­age.

Now let’s ap­ply these prin­ci­ples to cur­rent in­dus­tri­al ini­tia­tives as it re­lates to wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty.

Da­ta Cen­ters

A com­mon ob­jec­tion to AI da­ta cen­tres is that they may con­sume large quan­ti­ties of wa­ter while many cit­i­zens still ex­pe­ri­ence un­re­li­able sup­ply. The con­cern is un­der­stand­able but it leans to­wards po­lit­i­cal fear­mon­ger­ing be­cause it’s some­thing we have faced and ad­dressed in the past.

Point Lisas faced this prob­lem decades ago. Large petro­chem­i­cal plants need­ed re­li­able, high qual­i­ty wa­ter and the do­mes­tic sys­tem could not safe­ly car­ry the ad­di­tion­al in­dus­tri­al bur­den. T&T did not re­spond by aban­don­ing in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, in­stead we cre­at­ed a ded­i­cat­ed sup­ply.

The con­tract for the Point Lisas de­sali­na­tion plant was award­ed in 1999 and first wa­ter was de­liv­ered in 2002. The pri­ma­ry mar­ket for de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter was the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, with ex­cess wa­ter avail­able to sup­ple­ment do­mes­tic sup­ply. That’s over two decade ago that T&T has been there, done that.

The les­son is that in­dus­tri­al de­mand need not dis­place house­hold de­mand if the in­vestor builds or pays for ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty. De­pend­ing on the cool­ing sys­tem, that might mean re­cy­cled wa­ter, closed loop cool­ing or more de­sali­na­tion.

There is al­so a pric­ing prece­dent. Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al users pay TT$12.50 per cu­bic me­tre since 2012, com­pared with the or­di­nary me­tered non-do­mes­tic rate of TT$3.50 per cu­bic me­tre. Just as with med­ical tourism if we draw from ex­ist­ing re­sources we will cre­ate a prob­lem. If we in­tro­duce new re­sources prof­itably it can and will ben­e­fit the wider so­ci­ety.

Elec­tric­i­ty should be ap­proached in the same way. Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed was built around the re­quire­ments of an­oth­er elec­tric­i­ty in­ten­sive in­dus­tri­al project. Its 720-megawatt com­bined cy­cle plant had 240 MW al­lo­cat­ed to the pro­posed Alutrint alu­mini­um smelter and 480 MW to T&TEC. The smelter was can­celled. The gen­er­at­ing plant with sur­plus ca­pac­i­ty re­mains.

If you con­sid­er a pur­pose-built plant to de­vel­op a new in­dus­try, well again – T&T has been there, done that.

There are con­cerns about sub­si­dies. We as­sume that mar­ket rates will make this coun­try un­com­pet­i­tive in the AI space. Based on avail­able in­for­ma­tion this seems in­cor­rect. The av­er­age US in­dus­tri­al elec­tric­i­ty price in 2025 was US$0.0862 per kWh. In Vir­ginia, the cen­tre of the Amer­i­can da­ta cen­tre in­dus­try, reg­u­la­tors have cre­at­ed a sep­a­rate tar­iff class for cus­tomers above 25 MW specif­i­cal­ly to pre­vent in­fra­struc­ture costs be­ing shift­ed to or­di­nary cus­tomers. From 2027 those users will face long term com­mit­ments and min­i­mum pay­ments for trans­mis­sion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

That is a use­ful mod­el.

A Trinidad da­ta cen­tre tar­iff could be ma­te­ri­al­ly high­er than our lega­cy in­dus­tri­al rate, recog­nise the op­por­tu­ni­ty cost of nat­ur­al gas and re­cov­er the cost of new gen­er­a­tion and net­work in­vest­ment while still be­ing com­pet­i­tive with ma­jor US lo­ca­tions.

On prin­ci­ple, in­vestors should pay for ded­i­cat­ed sub­sta­tions, in­cre­men­tal gen­er­a­tion, cool­ing and wa­ter ca­pac­i­ty where re­quired. Ex­ist­ing house­holds and busi­ness­es should not sub­sidise the project. The eco­nom­ics seems achiev­able and some of the angst may be be­cause T&T is not used to an un­sub­sisd ven­ture. The San­dals pro­pos­al is a case in point and so the pub­lic ob­jec­tion could be to sub­si­dies for in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion rather than the busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty it­self.

In­fra­struc­ture

If we are not of­fer­ing sub­si­dies then what can we of­fer. That is at the heart of this In­de­pen­dence Day dis­cus­sion. T&T can of­fer qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture that will take years to build even in the US.

AI de­vel­op­ment is run­ning in­to an in­fra­struc­ture bot­tle­neck in the US. Berke­ley Lab es­ti­mates that da­ta cen­tres could con­sume about 11.8 per cent of US elec­tric­i­ty by 2030. At the end of 2025 more than 2,060 gi­gawatts of pro­posed gen­er­a­tion and stor­age sat in in­ter­con­nec­tion queues. Projects that ac­tu­al­ly reached op­er­a­tion dur­ing 2025 had tak­en a me­di­an of more than five years from in­ter­con­nec­tion re­quest to com­mer­cial op­er­a­tion.

The US has nat­ur­al gas, cap­i­tal and tech­nol­o­gy. What it in­creas­ing­ly lacks is the abil­i­ty to de­liv­er very large blocks of elec­tric­i­ty at the right lo­ca­tion on the timetable AI de­vel­op­ers want. T&T has al­ready done this at scale. That is where ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture be­comes valu­able.

The same ar­gu­ment ap­plies to the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal com­plex.

Ibis Steel, backed by US based Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um, has be­gun re­fur­bish­ment with an ini­tial planned in­vest­ment of US$250 mil­lion and po­ten­tial to­tal in­vest­ment of US$750 mil­lion. The in­ter­est­ing propo­si­tion is not sim­ply restart­ing steel. It is com­bin­ing steel­mak­ing with vana­di­um.

More than 90 per cent of re­port­ed US vana­di­um con­sump­tion is met­al­lur­gi­cal, prin­ci­pal­ly as an al­loy­ing in­put for iron and steel. The Unit­ed States pro­duced no pri­ma­ry vana­di­um from ore in 2025 and re­mained about 41 per cent de­pen­dent on net im­ports. Pin­na­cle says its am­bi­tion is even­tu­al­ly to pro­duce vana­di­um equiv­a­lent to rough­ly half of US con­sump­tion.

Now ex­am­ine what al­ready sur­rounds the project.

Point Lisas has a nat­ur­al gas-based di­rect re­duced iron and elec­tric arc fur­nace steel com­plex, port ac­cess, elec­tric­i­ty, pipelines, in­dus­tri­al land and an es­tab­lished en­gi­neer­ing ecosys­tem. The US can build the same tech­nol­o­gy but much of ours is al­ready there.

Any busi­ness case will still have to es­tab­lish pre­cise­ly what steel and vana­di­um prod­ucts are be­ing sold, to whom, and how US tar­iffs and trade mea­sures af­fect them. Nearshoring does not make those is­sues dis­ap­pear but it does make T&T more strate­gic in this hemi­sphere.

COVID ex­posed the weak­ness of sup­ply chains de­signed en­tire­ly around the low­est unit cost. Fac­to­ry shut­downs, port con­ges­tion and com­po­nent short­ages showed that cheap is not cheap when the prod­uct can­not ar­rive. Since then, com­pa­nies have placed more val­ue on re­silience, short­er sup­ply chains and prox­im­i­ty to cus­tomers. The IDB es­ti­mates that nearshoring could add US$78 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean ex­ports.

T&T will not beat Mex­i­co on ge­og­ra­phy or Cen­tral Amer­i­ca on labour costs. Our pitch has to be dif­fer­ent. We have a Caribbean in­dus­tri­al plat­form close to the Amer­i­c­as with spare or un­der­used as­sets whose orig­i­nal cap­i­tal cost has large­ly been in­curred. We know how to de­sali­nate wa­ter at in­dus­tri­al scale. We know how to build large gas-fired gen­er­at­ing plants. We know how to move gas, han­dle bulk prod­ucts and op­er­ate com­plex in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­i­ties.

Some of our pre­vi­ous in­vest­ments worked ex­act­ly as in­tend­ed while oth­ers did not. San­dals and the alu­mini­um smelter nev­er ma­te­ri­al­ized, and the sug­ar and oil re­fin­ery and the steel plant closed. Gas pro­duc­tion has al­so de­clined. That is our un­tidy his­to­ry of de­vel­op­ment. But In­de­pen­dence should al­so mean hav­ing the con­fi­dence to take in­ven­to­ry of what we have built and find ways to cap­i­talise on that, rather than let it sit idle and throw it away.

Ian Nar­ine is an in­de­pen­dent fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant with an In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage. Please send your com­ments to ian@ian­nar­ine.com.