The Gov­ern­ment is liv­ing in per­plex­i­ty. It finds it­self tan­gled in a com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion and is both con­fused and in a state of be­wil­der­ment. The sit­u­a­tion— eco­nom­ic, fi­nan­cial, on the crime front, and, for the cit­i­zen, in terms of be­ing able to live with­out fear of crime or cope with the cost of ba­sic needs—is pret­ty grim.

One prob­lem for Gov­ern­ment is what is pri­or­i­ty, not just what seems ur­gent; and the oth­er is how to do what must be done co­her­ent­ly, con­nect­ed­ly, se­quen­tial­ly, bal­anc­ing both sta­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty re­quire­ments.

The de­cline in GDP was al­most 20 per cent in a sev­en-year pe­ri­od un­der the Dr Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment. Re­cov­ery to pre-COVID lev­els was a ne­ces­si­ty and fur­ther growth could on­ly be boost­ed by in­vest­ment, ex­port growth, tourist in­flows, and in­creas­es in en­er­gy pro­duc­tion to boost LNG and petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports. Af­ter the 2025 elec­tion, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress these fell to PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The for­eign re­serves were un­der pres­sure; we were im­port­ing too much, liv­ing be­yond our means, the debt was al­ready high, and rev­enue had fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly, cash flow was poor, and the on­ly way for any gov­ern­ment to func­tion was to run up deficits, draw down on the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, bor­row more and in­crease tax­es and penal­ties. This Gov­ern­ment in the last year or so has done all of these. And now, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is tak­ing ex­pen­di­ture to $62.162 bil­lion to keep a promise to pub­lic ser­vants.

2024 saw the high­est mur­der count. This Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed a new com­mis­sion­er, em­pow­ered the po­lice and has tak­en the fight to the gangs. But they have been forced to gov­ern un­der a State of Emer­gency, and with in­creased po­lice ag­gres­sion. But, gangs and crime per­sist as un­pre­dictable threats.

The coun­try, with its re­duced in­come and sig­nif­i­cant debt re­pay­ment re­quire­ments, can­not re­al­ly af­ford the salary in­creas­es nor the re­cur­rent in­crease in gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture, but the hefty pen­sion in­creas­es for the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate ef­fect­ed by the Row­ley gov­ern­ment, made a ten per cent in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants a moral is­sue, trig­ger­ing a po­lit­i­cal, not eco­nom­ic, re­sponse. Pub­lic ser­vants aban­doned the Row­ley gov­ern­ment on that score, and Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s cam­paign promise earned her their em­brace, an elec­tion vic­to­ry and strength­ened the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ labour coali­tion.

Ho­n­our­ing the promise now is a moral oblig­a­tion ful­filled, not just a promise kept. But it is no guar­an­tee of con­sol­i­dat­ed sup­port. It sat­is­fies on­ly the present. And oth­er things chal­lenge the fu­ture.

One of them is the per­sis­tent, seem­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous crime, with­out re­lief, de­spite a SoE. An­oth­er is rev­enue. Even if one takes an op­ti­mistic view of an en­er­gy boost in 2028 or 2027, we still have to man­age an econ­o­my, its fi­nances and crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty over the next eigh­teen months. What are we do­ing in the in­ter­im to be bet­ter able to cap­i­talise on any en­er­gy re­lief we might get in 2028?

The plan re­cent­ly out­lined by the Min­is­ter of Trade is some­thing that can be worked on. The In­dia Stack, be­ing rolled out too slow­ly, could be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sped up. Small gains have been made so far but the coun­try needs big leaps. Very am­bi­tious tar­gets have been set for ex­ports and in­vest­ment; what we need now is an or­gan­ised, fo­cused start of sys­tem­at­ic ex­e­cu­tion and trans­for­ma­tion.

On the crime front, even if you ex­tend it, the SoE must come to an end soon.

Re­cent re­ports by the Cen­tral Bank, the World Bank and the IMF all in­di­cate slug­gish­ness in the econ­o­my and lit­tle growth. The in­ward in­vest­ments are still very lim­it­ed to en­er­gy.

The lat­est is Oc­ci­den­tal Pe­tro­le­um, which has tak­en a ten per cent share in Exxon’s deep­wa­ter in­vest­ment in T&T. This is good for T&T in terms of con­fi­dence in the ge­ol­o­gy and of fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties but the im­me­di­ate im­pact is neg­li­gi­ble. An in­vest­ment de­ci­sion to drill in wa­ters as deep as 3,000 me­tres will on­ly be made af­ter the da­ta is close­ly ex­am­ined by Exxon and Oc­ci­den­tal.

The oth­er en­er­gy projects in Venezuela of val­ue to T&T are pro­ceed­ing but al­so still pend­ing. So, there is a fu­ture in en­er­gy but nav­i­gat­ing the cross­ing brings an­tic­i­pa­tion and hope but lit­tle im­me­di­ate ease.

The di­ver­si­fied ex­ports track, the com­pre­hen­sive In­dia Stack for dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and the so­lu­tions to all im­ped­i­ments that stand in the way of busi­ness ef­fi­cien­cy are in­ter­con­nect­ed and mu­tu­al­ly sup­port­ive of an ef­fec­tive, com­pet­i­tive sys­tem. Crime con­tain­ment is sup­port­ive of busi­ness con­fi­dence. Dig­i­tal achieve­ment can pos­i­tive­ly af­fect the re­duc­tion of crime. Gov­ern­ment thus needs to break free of per­plex­i­ty by think­ing through to cu­mu­la­tive strate­gic ac­tion.