Last Thurs­day, T&T’s Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lene John and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ered ad­dress­es at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, rolling out the Gov­ern­ment’s huge­ly am­bi­tious, and po­ten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tion­al, vi­sion, called the Trinidad and To­ba­go Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print: Phase II of the na­tion­al re­cruit­ment dri­ve.

The blue­print out­lines 129 dis­creet con­struc­tion projects across the coun­try, in­clud­ing: the re­de­vel­op­ment of In­vaders Bay; the con­struc­tion of new wa­ter­fronts for Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do; a mas­sive ex­pan­sion of the Port of Port-of-Spain; a cross-coun­try high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Ma­yaro; the ex­pan­sion of the port at Ga­le­o­ta; the clo­sure and re­pur­pos­ing of three pris­ons at Car­rera Is­land, Fred­er­ick Street and Gold­en Grove and the cre­ation of a new Tamana Ju­di­cial and Cor­rec­tion Cen­tre.

Al­so laid out in the blue­print are plans for a Gov­ern­ment cam­pus in Ch­agua­nas, a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty com­plex lo­cat­ed be­tween Mount Hope and Val­sayn.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print is, with­out a doubt, the largest and most am­bi­tious vi­sion for ex­pan­sion through con­struc­tion ever en­vis­aged in the his­to­ry of the Caribbean.

In her ad­dress, Ms John said that dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase, the blue­print is ex­pect­ed to re­sult in the cre­ation of 50,919 jobs with the help of the pri­vate sec­tor. The to­tal job cre­ation com­pris­es 20,970 di­rect jobs, 23,964 in­di­rect jobs and 5,985 in­duced jobs, she said.

The Gov­ern­ment plans to roll out the projects from 2025 to 2035.

Out­lin­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s blue­print, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the fol­low­ing:

“We wel­come you to share our Gov­ern­ment’s bold and trans­for­ma­tive vi­sion to re­build and reimag­ine Trinidad and To­ba­go. For every great project, there must be a blue­print, a clear plan, and above all, we must have a vi­sion for a bet­ter, brighter, more pros­per­ous fu­ture.

“And so it is my gov­ern­ment’s mis­sion to ap­prove the qual­i­ty, im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for all, not just for to­day, but for our gen­er­a­tions to come.

“So even pol­i­cy, every pol­i­cy we craft is root­ed in one prin­ci­ple, and that is de­liv­ery.

“It has been over six months when we took of­fice, and I can prob­a­bly say that the promis­es re­main are be­ing put in­to ac­tion. Tan­gi­ble re­sults are al­ready be­ing seen.

“The peo­ple of our great na­tion placed their faith and their hope and trust in my gov­ern­ment and I and we are com­mit­ted to re­newed and re­vi­talised T&T.

“I as­sure you the work be­gan on day one and con­tin­ues on every sin­gle day. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning rolled out our bud­get, a bud­get that was one re­al­ly aimed at de­liv­er­ing, and that pre­sent­ed to us a road map. That bud­get, our first bud­get, a road map which charts the way for­ward for next fis­cal year.

“And the ques­tion that re­curs is, where will we find the mon­ey? Where we find the mon­ey. I told you then, and I tell you now, we will find that mon­ey, and that is why we are rol­lling out these projects to­geth­er to ad­vise you, so you and your var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions that you can help us find mon­ey that will bring mon­ey for in­vest­ment, but will give you mon­ey to re­turn back to your own coun­try, back to your own or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“I say for every project, there must be a blue­print and there must be a plan and this is the blue­print we put out here to­day.

“So, one loud cry, where is the mon­ey com­ing from? We will work to­geth­er to find it."

Ques­tions:

1) Cost of im­ple­men­ta­tion

While much in­for­ma­tion was shared last Thurs­day, the cru­cial ques­tion of the to­tal, es­ti­mat­ed cost of im­ple­ment­ing all 129 projects, was not ad­dressed.

As a re­sult, I asked Chat­G­PT to es­ti­mate the cost of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the en­tire Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, us­ing the cur­rent cost of con­struc­tion in T&T. The re­sponse was be­tween $20 bil­lion and $40 bil­lion.

I then asked the AI tool for the cost of the Port-of-Spain wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment, which en­vis­ages the re­de­vel­op­ment of 750 acres across the cap­i­tal city’s wa­ter­front, in­clud­ing In­vaders Bay as the an­chor site.

The to­tal cost, gen­er­at­ed by AI, was $10.4 bil­lion, with the 3,000 ho­tel rooms cost­ing $2,200 per square foot for a to­tal of $3.3 bil­lion; the 300 pre­mi­um apart­ments, com­pris­ing 1 mil­lion square feet at $1,600 per square, to­talling $1.6 bil­lion; com­mer­cial/cul­tur­al hubs of about 2,000,000 sq. ft at $2,000 per square foot for a to­tal of $4 bil­lion and in­fra­struc­ture up­grades at $1.5 bil­lion.

The San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment Project is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $6 to 8 bil­lion over mul­ti­ple phas­es. This fig­ure re­flects the scale of the re­vi­tal­iza­tion blue­print, which in­cludes ho­tels, res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ments, cul­tur­al spaces, and ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture up­grades along the wa­ter­front from King’s Wharf to Hat­ters Beach.

2) Where is the mon­ey com­ing from?

That is the ques­tion the T&T Prime Min­is­ter asked quite ear­ly in her ad­dress on No­vem­ber 6. Her an­swer: “We will work to­geth­er to find it.” It ap­pears that not even the Prime Min­is­ter knows how much these projects will cost and where the Gov­ern­ment will find the funds to fi­nance them.

Giv­en the huge sums of mon­ey re­quired, one place the mon­ey is sure NOT to come from would be the Gov­ern­ment’s own fi­nan­cial re­sources.

In the com­men­tary in this space last week, which was head­lined ‘Is T&T en­ter­ing the val­ley of debt?’ it was es­ti­mat­ed that of the $19 bil­lion the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to bor­row in the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, a to­tal of $7.675 bil­lion would be spent on in­ter­est pay­ments and the re­pay­ment of debt prin­ci­pal. That should mean that $11.290 bil­lion is “new” debt.

If the “new” debt of $11.290 bil­lion is added to the June debt of $147.899 bil­lion, that would take T&T’s to­tal debt at the end of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year to $159.189 bil­lion. My pro­jec­tion was that T&T’s debt-to-GDP ra­tio could be close to 92 per cent by the end of the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year.

All of that sim­ply means, T&T’s ca­pac­i­ty to bor­row mon­ey to fund the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print projects is SE­VERE­LY lim­it­ed;

3) If not Govt fund­ing, what?

Re­gion­al in­vest­ment banker, Gre­go­ry Hill, gave an in­ter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion on in­no­v­a­tive fi­nan­cial and in­vest­ing so­lu­tions a week ago at the out­line of the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print.

In the third pil­lar of his pre­sen­ta­tion, Hill said:

"The mo­bil­i­sa­tion of funds through pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships (PPPs), in­no­v­a­tive fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments and re­al es­tate in­vest­ment trusts, or RE­ITs, as we call them, can share risks and re­wards fair­ly, and this gen­er­ates de­vel­op­ment of cap­i­tal while con­tain­ing and con­strain­ing debt to GDP lev­els.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go's debt is in­vest­ment grade, and its cap­i­tal mar­kets, both eq­ui­ty and debt pro­vide a cred­i­ble base for lo­cal and for­eign par­tic­i­pa­tion. Right now across glob­al mar­kets, in­vestors are search­ing for the next fron­tier economies that com­bine macro eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, rule of law and un­tapped growth po­ten­tial. That is what in­vestors are look­ing for, and Trinidad and To­ba­go of­fers pre­cise­ly that bal­ance."

If the Gov­ern­ment were to at­tempt to fund the $3.3 bil­lion (US$485.3 mil­lion) AI-es­ti­mat­ed cost of the 3,000 ho­tel rooms at In­vaders Bay, it could prob­a­bly is­sue a 12-year bond at 6.5 per cent with a bul­let-pay­ment. That would mean $214.5 mil­lion (US$31.5 mil­lion) a year or $2.57 bil­lion (US$378.5 mil­lion) in in­ter­est pay­ments over 12 years plus the $3.3 bil­lion bul­let pay­ment at ma­tu­ri­ty. To­tal fi­nanc­ing cost of $5.87 bil­lion (US$863.8 bil­lion).

On the oth­er hand, if the Gov­ern­ment en­tered a PPP arrange­ment with a for­eign com­pa­ny to build the ho­tel com­plex, the in­ter­est cost alone could be US$50 mil­lion a year or US$600 mil­lion ($4.08 bil­lion) over 12 years. And if the arrange­ment is a Build Own Lease Trans­fer (BOLT) or Build Own Op­er­ate Trans­fer (BOOT), the Gov­ern­ment gets the keys to the build­ing af­ter 12 years.

The cost of the PPP may ap­pear to be less than the cost of the Gov­ern­ment-bond fi­nanc­ing. But the US$50 mil­lion a year in pay­ments un­der the PPP would pre­sum­ably be a di­rect charge on the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund or some arrange­ment that guar­an­tees pay­ment in US dol­lars.

What hap­pens to ei­ther arrange­ment if, down the road, the Gov­ern­ment's sov­er­eign debt is down­grad­ed or if T&T is re­quired to ad­dress the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund for a fi­nanc­ing pack­age that in­cludes debt re­struc­t­ing?

Part II next week