Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan says di­ver­si­fy­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas, has be­come an ab­solute im­per­a­tive in the next decade.

As she looked ahead to 2020 and be­yond, Dr Sage­wan warns that an over-re­liance on any one par­tic­u­lar sec­tor can no longer con­tin­ue.

She notes that the po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions which gov­erned over the past decade did make a start at di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, but those ef­forts have not borne fruit, nor did they get the kind of sup­port they need­ed.

She says we can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue putting all our eggs in the en­er­gy sec­tor bas­ket.

“When you look at the fact that re­new­able en­er­gies, and the ac­cel­er­at­ed rate at which they are im­prov­ing, and cost is go­ing down and use is tak­ing place,” she notes. “And the is­sue, for ex­am­ple, of re­duc­ing our car­bon foot­print and so many de­vel­oped coun­tries mak­ing pol­i­cy de­ci­sions to move away from the use of fos­sil fu­els. Our fu­ture can­not con­tin­ue to re­main down that road.”

Un­em­ploy­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing

Ac­cord­ing to the econ­o­mist, one ma­jor blow to the econ­o­my over the past year es­pe­cial­ly, has been an in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment.

She notes that in ad­di­tion to the re­fin­ery clo­sure at Petrotrin, there have been hun­dreds of peo­ple let go from ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cerns, a di­rect re­sult of the con­trac­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“What you’re see­ing hap­pen­ing is that com­pa­nies are mov­ing their man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty from Trinidad and To­ba­go to oth­er economies; oth­er economies in the re­gion or else­where,” she points out. “That is not a good thing for us. We have to take stock as we look to the fu­ture. We have to analyse the rea­sons why this is hap­pen­ing. And we have to put mea­sures in place in or­der to stop that drain that is hap­pen­ing. We have to be grow­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.”

De-mon­eti­sa­tion and $100 bills changeover

Dr In­dera Sage­wan is won­der­ing just how suc­cess­ful was gov­ern­ment’s de-mon­eti­sa­tion pro­gramme, name­ly the changeover from cot­ton-based to poly­mer $100 notes.

She re­calls that gov­ern­ment said it want­ed to deal a ma­jor blow to the black econ­o­my and il­le­gal fi­nances.

Ac­cord­ing to the econ­o­mist, the roll-out of the pro­gramme was not the best, and may not have helped the state achieve its ob­jec­tives.

She al­so ob­serves the ex­er­cise should have been a ma­jor wake up call for the bank­ing sys­tem.

“At the end of the day, would we have re­al­ly dealt the blow to il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty? Or would we have dealt a sig­nif­i­cant blow to the mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es, small busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als who, for good rea­son, do not have faith in the cur­rent bank­ing sys­tem?” Dr Sage­wan asks. “You have the charges you are sub­ject­ed to in terms of hav­ing your mon­ey in the banks, ver­sus just ba­si­cal­ly keep­ing your mon­ey where you feel com­fort­able that it is safe. There are a lot of peo­ple who are now learn­ing, who did not and do not have bank ac­counts, be­cause they do not trust the bank­ing sys­tem.”

She adds: “Hope­ful­ly that is a wake-up call for the bank­ing sys­tem to say, ‘Well lis­ten, what do we need to do to do dif­fer­ent go­ing for­ward, in or­der to en­cour­age peo­ple to put their monies with us more’?”

Dr Sage­wan al­so main­tains that more time should have been giv­en be­fore the val­ue of the cot­ton-based bills was com­plete­ly re­moved or de-mon­e­tised.

“Let’s say two years down the road I find a stack of old $100 bills,” she posits. “While I may not be able to trans­act busi­ness at a store with it, I should be to take it in­to the Cen­tral Bank or a com­mer­cial bank and have it ex­changed, be­cause I should not be pe­nalised for the fact that I was stor­ing val­ue in what I be­lieve is one of my coun­try’s sig­nif­i­cant store val­ue.”