On Au­gust 31, Trinidad and To­ba­go will cel­e­brate 64 years as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try. Last year, I edit­ed a book to­geth­er with Prof Roger Ho­sein and Dr Re­bec­ca Gookool-Bosland, in which schol­ars and ex­perts came to­geth­er to as­sess T&T’s achieve­ments and deficits in var­i­ous sec­tors, af­ter 60 years of In­de­pen­dence. That book al­so as­sessed this coun­try in macro­eco­nom­ic and gov­er­nance terms and a chap­ter was de­vot­ed to To­ba­go.

In the fi­nal chap­ter, as I re­flect­ed on what T&T might do next, I con­clud­ed: “The present is ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing and, while the medi­um-term out­look re­mains sta­ble, there are no guar­an­tees. Care­ful nav­i­ga­tion over the next five to sev­en years is es­sen­tial, along with metic­u­lous, sen­si­tive man­age­ment in the im­me­di­ate three-year pe­ri­od. Clear pol­i­cy ac­tions fo­cused on di­ver­si­fy­ing ex­port growth and pro­mot­ing self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty wher­ev­er pos­si­ble are not just de­sir­able, they are im­per­a­tive. These strate­gies are cru­cial for en­sur­ing long-term sta­bil­i­ty and re­silience in the face of un­cer­tain­ty; and will help T&T to build a more sus­tain­able and di­ver­si­fied fu­ture.”

Over the last year, some sig­nif­i­cant gains have been made by the Gov­ern­ment as well as pri­vate sec­tor play­ers in en­er­gy. Things will get bet­ter. How­ev­er, T&T is still po­si­tioned in the midst of a del­i­cate eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment, work­ing with NGC, Shell, BP, Exxon and oth­ers, and with Venezuela and the Unit­ed States, has been able to es­tab­lish a struc­tur­al bridge which edges T&T to a mod­est sup­ply re­cov­ery by 2027, pro­vid­ed all things that need to hap­pen ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen. And 2028 should take us a bit fur­ther. But a for­mi­da­ble three-way pres­sure point re­mains.

To run T&T’s in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture at full throt­tle, we need about 4.2 bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. That will not be pro­duced by 2027. But gas out­put from Man­a­tee and Aphrodite (Shell) and Gin­ger (bpTT) has been pro­ject­ed at a pos­si­ble high of 3.4 bcf. This will be enough to re­ac­ti­vate some down­stream idle ca­pac­i­ty and this, in turn, will ease the fis­cal pres­sure a bit.

Pro­vid­ed all goes well, and Drag­on and Man­a­tee can feed in­to a com­plet­ed pipeline struc­tured from Venezuela di­rect­ly in­to T&T’s do­mes­tic net­work, 2028 could be bet­ter. Be­cause then, forex in­flow from re­cov­er­ing LNG, am­mo­nia, and Methanol sec­tors to the Cen­tral Bank may be able to in­crease forex re­serves to more months of im­port cov­er. The fruits of the uni­tised, re­struc­tured At­lantic LNG might well pro­vide the Trea­sury with the first sig­nif­i­cant net back and buffer in a decade.

But while this will im­prove T&T’s gen­er­al po­si­tion some­what, the Gov­ern­ment would be wise to al­so pur­sue non-en­er­gy di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ded­i­cat­ed­ly.

A vi­able in­vestor-op­er­a­tor and a strate­gic mod­el with­out Gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment still needs to be fi­nalised for Petrotrin.

Vi­o­lent crime and gang­ster­ism (which it seems is be­ing re­lent­less­ly ad­dressed) has to be con­tained in a non-State of Emer­gency con­text.

And ba­sics like wa­ter ac­cess and elec­tric­i­ty grid sta­bil­i­ty, low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is­sues in the pub­lic sec­tor and the dri­ve to greater self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty all need to be ad­dressed frontal­ly.

At age 64, Gov­ern­ment needs to fo­cus on so­lu­tions for the longer term. To move to an­oth­er cy­cle of boom and bust will be dis­as­trous for this coun­try.

In any case, even by 2030, it may not be any­thing re­sem­bling a boom. We will prob­a­bly have greater eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and se­lec­tive growth. The deep­wa­ter and cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas fruits will pro­vide a buffer against struc­tur­al de­cline, which can give the Gov­ern­ment space and op­por­tu­ni­ty to man­age a crit­i­cal, mul­ti-front en­er­gy tran­si­tion. It may just be enough of a fis­cal bridge to make mean­ing­ful di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, trans­for­ma­tion and shared pros­per­i­ty a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty.

T&T has a num­ber of struc­tur­al bot­tle­necks typ­i­cal of ma­ture re­source-de­pen­dent post-colo­nial states. The de­sir­able so­lu­tions re­quire tar­get­ed pol­i­cy shifts for long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Of the 70 or so coun­tries that have crossed 70 years as in­de­pen­dent states, T&T is do­ing well- scor­ing well on per capi­ta in­come, hu­man de­vel­op­ment in­di­ca­tors and as­sessed as a coun­try in the high mid­dle-in­come tier. But at a gran­u­lar lev­el,

T&T is re­source-de­pen­dent; we are crime-rid­den, pub­lic sec­tor is weak, in­sti­tu­tions are slow to adapt, and as an econ­o­my, T&T is not com­pet­i­tive.

Time to solve these things as we get a new, stag­gered wave of ben­e­fits from en­er­gy.