As he walked in­to the pres­i­den­cy of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMS), Dale Par­son ex­pressed a note of great con­fi­dence that the “non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ers will be the he­roes in the long-term.” What he means is that man­u­fac­tur­ing will even­tu­al­ly take up the slack left in the for­eign ex­change-earn­ing econ­o­my, as the en­er­gy in­dus­try be­comes less able to sat­is­fy the to­tal needs of the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety for the earn­ing of hard cur­ren­cy.

The state­ment be­comes even more im­por­tant, now that the dif­fi­cul­ties of the US-im­posed sanc­tions on the Drag­on gas arrange­ment be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela have raised deep con­cerns about T&T be­ing able to earn suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change from en­er­gy to meet over­all needs.

Achiev­ing such an out­stand­ing need has been a steep climb up­hill for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers. In­deed, it is one that has pro­vid­ed chal­lenges and dif­fer­ing lev­els of suc­cess right across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. Those suc­cess­es have come in tourism and in pe­ri­ods when the off­shore fi­nan­cial in­dus­try proved prof­itable.

“My goal as the new pres­i­dent, I have set a tar­get to grow ex­ports from the cur­rent $6.2 bil­lion to $10.6 bil­lion and that’s pure­ly lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts for ex­ports,” said the TTMA pres­i­dent, who is the CEO of Kalei­do­scope Paints. He es­ti­mates the ul­ti­mate con­tri­bu­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ing to for­eign ex­change will be US$1.4 bil­lion.

Al­though be­ing a healthy sum if achieved, it does not com­pare with the 14-plus bil­lion TT dol­lars in en­er­gy rev­enues for 2024. Nev­er­the­less, if pur­sued, it will be a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment in the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor on the mis­sion to achieve an­oth­er growth pole of pro­duc­tion.

More­over, ad­vances in the ex­port of fin­ished goods changes com­plete­ly the his­tor­i­cal role of economies such as those in the Caribbean, which were de­signed and de­vel­oped to pro­duce raw ma­te­ri­als and se­mi-fin­ished ar­ti­cles for the re­al val­ue-adding fin­ish­ing to take place in the Metro­pole. That colo­nial eco­nom­ic mod­el al­lowed the in­dus­tri­al coun­tries to gain max­i­mum ben­e­fit for the fin­ished prod­ucts. At the same time, we, the pro­duc­ers of the raw ma­te­ri­als, were re­ward­ed with lit­tle for our out­put.

If there­fore, TTMA pres­i­dent Par­son and the non-oil and gas man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor can achieve the tar­gets and gen­er­al­ly spread the pro­duc­tion of ex­ports, the T&T econ­o­my can be on the road to hav­ing a mea­sure of re­silience to the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by a small state.

Notwith­stand­ing the ex­pressed hopes of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, it should be made clear that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices does not mean leav­ing un­ex­plored en­er­gy in the Earth and un­der the sea. In­deed, it will be fool­ish to do such a thing giv­en the kind of rev­enue earned from the sec­tor on an an­nu­al ba­sis and the re­main­ing re­serves of hy­dro­car­bons still in the ground. The ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive is to be an able part­ner with Venezuela to re­fine that coun­try’s vast reser­voir of nat­ur­al gas.

What di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion means is the ad­di­tion of oth­er sec­tors to that of en­er­gy which can earn vi­tal for­eign ex­change for the coun­try. The chal­lenge is now be­fore the man­u­fac­tur­ers and the Gov­ern­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly col­lab­o­rate to achieve mean­ing­ful growth and de­vel­op­ment for Trinidad and To­ba­go with a spread to the Cari­com re­gion.