Re­cent­ly in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert stat­ed that more Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are mak­ing pur­chas­es on­line. Im­bert al­so added that lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions used a to­tal of US$1.205 bil­lion to meet cred­it-card for­eign oblig­a­tions in 2018.

US dol­lar out­flows due to on­line shop­ping have steadi­ly in­creased in re­cent times; in 2010 it was US $343 mil­lion, in 2011 $376 mil­lion, in 2012 $539 mil­lion, in 2013 $531 mil­lion, in 2014 $641 mil­lion and in 2015 $776 mil­lion.

Even the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a sev­en per cent on­line sales tax in 2016 could not stem the del­uge. This is a grow­ing trend glob­al­ly and high­lights the fact that lo­cal busi­ness­es will face in­creas­ing pres­sure from on­line com­peti­tors across var­i­ous in­dus­tries, and es­pe­cial­ly in the re­tail sec­tor.

The de­mand for US dol­lars by the pop­u­la­tion is steadi­ly in­creas­ing but what about sup­ply?

With­out a bal­ance, there will be con­tin­ued jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a de­val­u­a­tion of the T&T dol­lar and all the hard­ship that comes with that. A sound in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy built on our com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages is one way to in­crease es­sen­tial for­eign ex­change in­flows and cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs.

With a pro­ject­ed down­ward trend in rev­enues from the en­er­gy sec­tor, a height­ened em­pha­sis must be placed on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. The cor­ner­stone of such a plan will in­vari­ably come from T&T’s in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy, due to our nat­ur­al ad­van­tages in this sec­tor. Make no mis­take, the great­est in­dus­tri­al ad­van­tage in T&T’s ar­se­nal is the abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate low-cost elec­tric­i­ty (en­er­gy) from nat­ur­al gas. A huge por­tion of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic for­tunes hinge on a steady sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas. This fact has fu­elled gov­ern­ment’s dogged pur­suit of a con­firmed Drag­on Field agree­ment and mo­ti­vat­ed multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies be­ing grant­ed tax breaks based on their in­vest­ment in fur­ther ex­plo­ration. Low-cost en­er­gy is king and has been for a very long time. The ques­tion is: how do we use these re­sources?

What we are cur­rent­ly sub­ject to is an out­dat­ed en­er­gy based eco­nom­ic mod­el which reg­u­lar­ly leaves us vul­ner­a­ble to forces be­yond our con­trol.

We ex­tract a dwin­dling sup­ply of oil and gas from our shores, then sell this valu­able re­source to de­vel­oped coun­tries to fu­el their man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor so that they can pro­duce goods which are then some­times sold to us at ex­or­bi­tant prices.

With the ad­vent of shale oil drilling (caus­ing over­sup­ply in en­er­gy mar­kets) and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of en­er­gy al­ter­na­tives this mod­el is ir­re­triev­ably doomed. T&T had at one point sup­plied 70 per cent of the nat­ur­al gas needs of east coast USA. To­day the Unit­ed States is a net ex­porter of nat­ur­al gas. The re­form re­quired to in­su­late our econ­o­my from glob­al en­er­gy price shocks would mean us­ing our oil and gas do­mes­ti­cal­ly.

T&T would pro­duce low-cost en­er­gy for en­er­gy in­ten­sive in­dus­tries to be used in the pro­duc­tion of com­pet­i­tive­ly priced ba­sic com­mod­i­ty in­puts (iron, steel, alu­minum and plas­tics) so T&T can de­vel­op a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. This had been the pre­vi­ous plan with Point Lisas and Labid­co in LaBrea be­ing ear­marked as the epi­cen­tre of this eco­nom­ic rev­o­lu­tion.

The in­fra­struc­ture in Point Fortin and La Brea was be­ing up­grad­ed for ex­press­ly this pur­pose; the bil­lions of dol­lars spent on the Point Fortin high­way would have been off­set by the ad­di­tion­al rev­enues gen­er­at­ed by the alu­mini­um smelter project and the Labid­co in­dus­tri­al es­tate.

With­out these projects, the Point Fortin high­way has sad­dled T&T with bil­lions in debt that have to be paid with de­creas­ing en­er­gy rev­enues and a Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) pow­er plant which reg­u­lar­ly pro­duces more elec­tric­i­ty than the coun­try can use. More and more debt to be re­paid by a dwin­dling source of rev­enue.

Us­ing our nat­ur­al re­sources lo­cal­ly to pro­duce in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive, val­ue added goods will ush­er in an era of wealth and sus­tain­able jobs the likes of which we have not seen be­fore as a coun­try. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less; look around you right now, which prod­uct is not made of some com­bi­na­tion of iron, steel, plas­tics and alu­mini­um?

Think of the val­ue added, down­stream pos­si­bil­i­ties and the jobs cre­at­ed across a myr­i­ad of skill lev­els. That is what T&T needs go­ing for­ward. One-off projects in a hand­ful of sec­tors won’t pro­tect the econ­o­my from the cur­ren­cy and debt cri­sis that are pos­si­ble if we do not re­main vig­i­lant. We need to cre­ate new in­dus­tries in high rev­enue gen­er­at­ing fields and train our peo­ple so that they can ac­cess the jobs cre­at­ed. These mea­sures would al­so have great so­cial im­pact.

The re­cent­ly re­port­ed fact that gangs in T&T have been fight­ing over turf to im­prove their ac­cess to more gov­ern­ment con­tracts should not have come as a sur­prise to any­one who has been pay­ing at­ten­tion.

The gangs have con­trolled con­tract­ed work in many of these at-risk com­mu­ni­ties for years and no sen­si­ble con­trac­tor with­out gang af­fil­i­a­tion would even both­er ten­der­ing for work or they would have wished they hadn’t. Even if these gang lead­ers were all im­pris­oned and gangs no longer were award­ed con­tracts it wouldn’t solve the prob­lem.

What al­ter­na­tives are there to make gang mem­ber­ship seem less at­trac­tive?

With­out de­cent jobs that can sus­tain a re­spectable lifestyle any crime ini­tia­tive will on­ly have tem­po­rary re­sults. We must of­fer a bet­ter way and ac­cess to the skills re­quired for a bet­ter life. Build­ing more pris­ons won’t achieve a bet­ter so­ci­ety.

It sounds like a bro­ken record by now: di­ver­si­fy, di­ver­si­fy, di­ver­si­fy. The truth is it is ex­act­ly what we need to avoid an eco­nom­ic and so­cial cri­sis in T&T. The clock is tick­ing and oil and gas prices are not ex­pect­ed to dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­crease any time soon. The en­er­gy sec­tor is al­so no­to­ri­ous for not cre­at­ing a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of jobs ei­ther way.

With­out a sound di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan but­tressed by a sen­si­ble in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy T&T will run in­to a se­ries of cas­cad­ing crises which will threat­en to un­rav­el the eco­nom­ic and so­cial fab­ric of our coun­try.

An in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy based on our com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages as a coun­try is one way in which the we can move to­wards solv­ing sev­er­al of our most press­ing chal­lenges.