PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

T&T’s po­ten­tial re­bound in the oil and gas sec­tor in the near fu­ture, as well as con­tin­ued en­er­gy sec­tor de­vel­op­ment in Guyana and Suri­name, has led to split for­eign as­sess­ments of eco­nom­ic growth or re­cov­ery in the Caribbean for 2026 to 2027.

The pro­jec­tions, ac­cord­ing to re­ports from both the World Bank and Afrex­im­bank re­leased last week, note a sig­nif­i­cant dis­tinc­tion be­tween the growth ex­pect­ed in coun­tries with sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy sec­tor in­vest­ments ex­pect­ed to come to life in the next 12 to 18 months, as op­posed to those with tra­di­tion­al tourism-de­pen­dent economies.

In the World Bank's re­port en­ti­tled: Latin Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Up­date with the sub­head­ing 'Re­vis­it­ing In­dus­tri­al Pol­i­cy: Strate­gic Op­tions for To­day' which was re­leased on April 8, 2026, this di­choto­my was es­pe­cial­ly high­light­ed.

The re­port stat­ed, " In the Caribbean, the oil-dri­ven ex­pan­sion of Guyana—and soon Suri­name, and to a less­er de­gree Trinidad and To­ba­go—is widen­ing di­ver­gence rel­a­tive to economies that de­pend heav­i­ly on tourism. Ja­maica is re­cov­er­ing from a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane, while Haiti’s prospects de­pend crit­i­cal­ly on the suc­cess of new se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives."

The Wash­ing­ton-based World Bank's as­sess­ment would ex­pand on this state­ment lat­er in the re­port un­der the sub­head­ing, 'A dual-track out­look in the Caribbean'

The re­port said, "In the Caribbean, Guyana’s oil-dri­ven surge con­tin­ues to lift the sub­re­gion­al av­er­age in 2026. Trinidad and To­ba­go—an­oth­er hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­er—ben­e­fits in­ter­mit­tent­ly from gas-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, but with a more ma­ture pro­duc­tion pro­file and with­out the scale of ex­pan­sion seen in Guyana. Suri­name, while not yet ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an oil-led surge, is be­gin­ning to see growth sup­port­ed by in­vest­ment and ex­pec­ta­tions linked to re­cent off­shore dis­cov­er­ies."

How­ev­er, for the re­gion's coun­tries with­out sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy sec­tor ex­pec­ta­tions in 2027, the re­port said, "By con­trast, growth in the rest of the Caribbean has been mod­er­at­ing as tourism-de­pen­dent economies face costs, and cli­mate-re­lat­ed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. The re­sult is an in­creas­ing­ly dual-track out­look with­in the sub­re­gion. This widen­ing con­trast un­der­scores the grow­ing di­ver­gence be­tween re­source-rich pro­duc­ers and the re­main­der of the Caribbean."

T&T's econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to see re­al GDP growth of 0.7 per cent in 2026, but the World Bank sug­gests this would rise in 2027, with a re­al GDP growth rate of 3.2 per cent.

This put T&T’s pro­ject­ed growth ahead of Bar­ba­dos (3.0), Grena­da (3.0) and St. Vin­cent (3.1); on par with Ja­maica but be­hind Suri­name (4.5) and the surg­ing Guyana (23.5).

En­er­gy ex­perts have stat­ed that the lo­cal sec­tor is an­tic­i­pat­ing in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty next year as sev­er­al pro­duc­tions are ex­pect­ed to yield sig­nif­i­cant gas re­turns in 2027.

They in­clude Shell's Man­a­tee and Aphrodite; Man­a­tee is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er first gas in 2027, while Aphrodite is sched­uled to come on­stream in 2027.

Gin­ger, one of bpTT's op­er­a­tions, is al­so set to de­liv­er first gas in 2027, while Co­conut, a 50/50 project be­tween bp and EOG, is an­tic­i­pat­ed to reach first gas in 2027.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, re­cent dis­cus­sions be­tween Venezuela and en­er­gy gi­ant Shell have prompt­ed op­ti­mism that gas from cross bor­der fields such as Drag­on and oth­ers could al­so bol­ster ac­tiv­i­ty in the sec­tor in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture.

Shell has pub­licly out­lined plans to use the At­lantic LNG plant in Point Fortin to process gas from those fields.

Ear­li­er this week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced plans for a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion to trav­el to Venezuela to en­sure T&T se­cures its “just share” of cross-bor­der oil and gas re­sources, sig­nalling a re­newed push to ad­vance long-stalled en­er­gy projects.

This came weeks af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young raised con­cerns about T&T's lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in those dis­cus­sions.

How­ev­er, the op­ti­mistic as­sess­ment for the Caribbean did not just come from the World Bank.

In the Afrex­im­bank re­search newslet­ter for the first quar­ter of 2026, en­ti­tled: African Trade and Eco­nom­ic Out­look 2026 Mov­ing up the lad­der: Cap­tur­ing more val­ue from Africa’s com­modi­ties, it was stat­ed, "With­in the CARI­COM re­gion, the eco­nom­ic out­look for 2025–2026 ap­pears gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive. While growth is ex­pect­ed to slow to 3.6 per cent in 2025, it is pro­ject­ed to re­bound to 8.4 per cent in 2026, dri­ven in part by the rapid de­vel­op­ment of the oil sec­tor in Guyana," it stat­ed.

How­ev­er, like the World Bank, the Afrex­im­bank as­sess­ment for tourism-based economies pro­ject­ed less ex­pan­sive growth.

The Afriex­im­bank re­port, which large­ly fo­cus­es on the con­ti­nent's eco­nom­ic out­look, ex­tend­ed its analy­sis to CARI­COM to sup­port en­hanced co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Africa and the Caribbean, which is in line with the bank's glob­al Africa in­te­gra­tion strat­e­gy.

The newslet­ter said, "tourism-de­pen­dent economies are an­tic­i­pat­ed to main­tain steady (al­beit slow­er) growth as the post-pan­dem­ic re­cov­ery sta­bilis­es."

The African re­port, how­ev­er, not­ed that trade be­tween the con­ti­nent and the Caribbean did hinge on en­er­gy pro­duc­tion in T&T and Guyana.

The re­search team stat­ed, "In­fla­tion is ex­pect­ed to ease fur­ther across the re­gion, sta­bil­is­ing around 6.6 to 6.7 per cent, as glob­al sup­ply con­di­tions im­prove and ex­change rates be­come more sta­ble. Mer­chan­dise trade is al­so fore­cast to grow grad­u­al­ly, sup­port­ed by sus­tained en­er­gy pro­duc­tion in Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with re­newed in­vest­ment in var­i­ous mem­ber states," it said.

The re­port stat­ed fur­ther that geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues did threat­en to desta­bilise growth in the re­gion, as it said, "down­side risks in­clude tighter glob­al fi­nan­cial con­di­tions, in­creased debt vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, ex­po­sure to cli­mate-re­lat­ed dis­rup­tions, and po­ten­tial slow­downs in key tourism mar­kets.

Nonethe­less, deep­er in­te­gra­tion through the Cari­com CSME, along with ef­forts to strength­en re­gion­al val­ue chains and re­duce non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers, could act as an im­por­tant buffer to mit­i­gate the risks."

The newslet­ter stressed that "in­creased in­tra-Cari­com trade and in­vest­ment, cou­pled with co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tions to en­hance cli­mate re­silience and pro­mote eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, could help to sus­tain the re­gion's long-term growth tra­jec­to­ry."

Geopo­lit­i­cal con­cerns were al­so raised in the World Bank re­port, as while it not­ed that tar­iff in­creas­es in the re­gion were not as large as ex­pect­ed, there were still sev­er­al risks.

The World Bank said, "Re­al­is­ing these up­side op­por­tu­ni­ties re­quires com­ple­men­tary do­mes­tic re­forms that re­duce pol­i­cy un­cer­tain­ty, close gaps in in­fra­struc­ture and hu­man cap­i­tal, and strength­en in­sti­tu­tions so that pri­vate cap­i­tal can re­spond when glob­al un­cer­tain­ty re­cedes.”

It added these prospects co­ex­ist with down­side risks, no­tably from re­newed con­flict in the Mid­dle East, where en­er­gy-price volatil­i­ty could de­lay dis­in­fla­tion and weigh on growth.