A few weeks ago I asked the ques­tion whether Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can piv­ot like Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley.

At that time I was re­flect­ing on a speech giv­en by Mot­t­ley in which she ar­tic­u­lat­ed a vi­sion for the Caribbean. A bold vi­sion in which the re­gion could be a glob­al leader in tech­nol­o­gy and one which fi­nal­ly moves away from an over-de­pen­dence on a sin­gu­lar prod­uct for its sus­te­nance.

The ques­tion was be­ing asked of our two po­lit­i­cal lead­ers be­cause Row­ley as Prime Min­is­ter and Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Op­po­si­tion Leader must play key roles if this coun­try is to move for­ward in the short term.

For sure both are in many ways ir­rel­e­vant to T&T’s long-term fu­ture as they are both in the win­ter of their years and near­ing the end of their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers, but the chal­lenge that the econ­o­my faces is that the gov­ern­ment has such a large hand in it, the pri­vate sec­tor can­not on its own move the econ­o­my for­ward.

Per­haps we can look at two ex­am­ples of how gov­ern­ment’s ac­tion plays a cru­cial role in how the econ­o­my per­forms. The first is the reg­is­tra­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants by the gov­ern­ment, al­low­ing them to live and work in this coun­try legal­ly, has pro­vid­ed an ad­di­tion­al source of rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive labour to the coun­try. It is not just labour for labour sake, but the re­al­i­ty is that the Venezue­lan mi­grants have proven them­selves to be hard and ef­fi­cient­ly work­ers and bring with them a lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty much need­ed in a so­ci­ety that has long suf­fered from in­ef­fi­cient work­ers.

That the gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has not yet seen the strate­gic im­por­tance of these mi­grants and have not en­act­ed the nec­es­sary laws to reg­u­late their mi­gra­tion and at­tempt to make the best use of this valu­able source of young labour is in keep­ing with the make it up as we go ap­proach to gov­er­nance that has been a hall­mark of the man from Ma­son Hall’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Lest we had any doubts, it shows that the de­ci­sion to al­low for the reg­is­tra­tion of the Venezue­lans was a knee-jerk re­ac­tion to the calls from civ­il so­ci­ety, led by the Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain to do some­thing and not a re­al in­ter­est in see­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty in cri­sis and in hav­ing a strate­gic ap­proach by the state.

Should we then be sur­prised that the Prime Min­is­ter could seek to ex­cuse the Trumpian be­hav­iour of his gov­ern­ment to re­turn chil­dren to the sea un­der the same Trump ar­gu­ment that they are be­ing traf­ficked and that T&T is a na­tion of laws?

Can the Prime Min­is­ter ever piv­ot to a more hu­mane ap­proach to gov­er­nance, one where diplo­ma­cy is to seek so­lu­tions and not to scream at and lec­ture peo­ple on his ar­cha­ic views of what the coun­try and world must look like?

The Prime Min­is­ter must know that the re-elec­tion of his gov­ern­ment with a small­er ma­jor­i­ty was a di­rect re­sponse of the pop­u­la­tion to the ma­jor­i­ty’s in­abil­i­ty to coun­te­nance Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her col­leagues oc­cu­py­ing the cor­ri­dors of pow­er and not in any­way an en­dorse­ment of the last five years.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the weeks since the Piv­ot col­umn has fur­ther shown why she has con­sis­tent­ly lost elec­tion af­ter elec­tion as her ze­ro sum pol­i­tics, one that says if we can’t have it then mash it up, ab­hors those out­side of her base and rel­e­gates her in­creas­ing­ly to ir­rel­e­vance. She is the per­fect leader of the op­po­si­tion to a Prime Min­is­ter who needs to of­ten de­flect from the fail­ures of his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The sec­ond is the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the down­stream sec­tor and the cri­sis fac­ing the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies.

As read­ers would no doubt be aware that T&T has four main sources of ex­port rev­enue, oil, gas, petro­chem­i­cals and man­u­fac­tur­ing. In a small open-econ­o­my like ours, earn­ing for­eign ex­change is cru­cial be­cause we need to pay with hard cur­ren­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly Unit­ed States dol­lars, for many of the things we con­sume and the raw ma­te­ri­als used in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process .

The last time T&T was forced to go in­to an IMF struc­tur­al ad­just­ment pro­gramme, with all the at­ten­dant pain, it was be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient forex to sup­port our bal­ance of pay­ment po­si­tion.

In that con­text the en­er­gy sec­tor has for the last fifty years played a cru­cial role in earn­ing for­eign ex­change. First it was oil, then it was petro­chem­i­cals and in the late 1990s to present al­so nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and ex­port of LNG.

In the case of petro­chem­i­cals T&T de­vel­oped what was called the Trinidad mod­el. T&T was one of the first coun­tries to de­ter­mine that it should mon­e­tise its nat­ur­al gas. It took gas that was es­sen­tial­ly seen as not valu­able, since it was a by-prod­uct of oil pro­duc­tion and used it as a feed­stock, and gen­er­at­ed valu­able prod­ucts. So it was tak­ing cheap gas, invit­ing com­pa­nies to set up shop here and ex­port in­to the US and Eu­ro­pean mar­kets. This strat­e­gy re­sult­ed in T&T be­com­ing the lead­ing ex­porter of methanol and am­mo­nia in the world and con­tribut­ing bil­lions of US dol­lars to the trea­sury.

The coun­try’s first Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams in 1976 ar­tic­u­lat­ed: “There have been at­tempts to per­suade us that the sim­plest and eas­i­est thing to do would be to sit back, ex­port our oil, ex­port our gas, do noth­ing else and just re­ceive the rev­enues de­rived from such ex­ports and as it were, lead a life of lux­u­ry – at least or some lim­it­ed pe­ri­od. This, the Gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly re­ject­ed, for it amounts to putting the en­tire na­tion on the dole. In­stead, we have tak­en what may be the more dif­fi­cult road and that is, ac­cept­ing the chal­lenge of en­ter­ing the world of steel, alu­mini­um, methanol, fer­tilis­er, petro­chem­i­cals. We have ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge of us­ing our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources in a very def­i­nite in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion process.”

More than a year ago econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rence Far­rell pre­sent­ed a study in which he looked at the state of the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

Far­rell’s study de­ter­mined that there was a need for ur­gent gov­ern­ment ac­tion to re-look the gas val­ue chain, since the tec­ton­ic changes brought about by shale gas, high­er nat­ur­al gas prices lo­cal­ly and cur­tail­ment is­sues were in­creas­ing­ly mak­ing T&T un­com­pet­i­tive and could lead to plant clo­sures.

The Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion at­tacked the study and led by its Min­is­ter of every­thing Stu­art Young it sought to rub­bish it, even at­tack­ing the for­mer head of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board by sug­gest­ing that be­cause it was paid for by a pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ty, he would com­pro­mise his rep­u­ta­tion for in­tel­lec­tu­al rigour and pro­duce a study to fit the in­ter­est of its spon­sor.

A year on and plants have closed, the mod­el has run its course and on No­vem­ber 17 the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy had to ad­mit to the Par­lia­ment that the val­ue chain was weak.

“We are analysing what we call the gas val­ue chain, these are not just words you know, this has sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for the coun­try and this brava­do and loose way and com­ing and call­ing $3.10, $3.25 and $3.50 you could cat­a­pult the whole ne­go­ti­a­tions you know...be­cause of the ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. I mean I am get­ting fed up of it now,” thun­dered Khan.

Khan’s ref­er­ence to the $3.10, $3.25 and $3.50 was as a re­sult of Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s as­ser­tion that the NGC could have on­ly af­ford­ed to pay to the Up­stream pro­duc­ers like BPTT, Roy­al Dutch Shell and EOG Re­sources, US $3.10 per mil­lion British ther­mal unit (MMB­TU) of nat­ur­al gas but the en­er­gy com­pa­nies want­ed US $3.25. Mys­te­ri­ous­ly, ac­cord­ing to Mark, a team led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley forced the NGC to agree to US $3.50 per MMB­TU which it can­not now sell on­to the down­stream.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter posit­ed: “We are in a po­si­tion now where the chain has got­ten weak. The NGC has two choic­es, im­pose the ad­di­tion­al charges on the down­stream­ers and col­lapse the whole of Point Lisas, or find a mech­a­nism to work it through... We have small­er fields so the unit cost per mmb­tu is high­er. For the chain to sur­vive you need up­stream. Up­stream is say­ing I can­not sur­vive on a price less than this and the down­stream is say­ing I can­not sur­vive on a price more than this and the NGC is in the mid­dle be­ing squeezed out as the ag­gre­ga­tor. That is the com­plex sit­u­a­tion we are cur­rent­ly in­volved in.”

It is a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion but had the gov­ern­ment seen more than a year ago that there is a need to piv­ot, to not group think and adopt a po­si­tion that if some­thing is not com­ple­men­tary to the gov­ern­ment then we must try to de­stroy the mes­sen­ger, we might have been in a bet­ter po­si­tion to­day.

The Trinidad mod­el has run its course. We must now look at ways in which we can use the foun­da­tion of petro­chem­i­cals and go fur­ther down­stream. We must get the fis­cal sit­u­a­tion right and we must de­ter­mine once and for all the fu­ture role of the NGC, on the ba­sis of eco­nom­ics and fi­nance and not on sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty.

We must piv­ot now or face ru­in.

I will be off for the next few weeks and my col­league Joel Julien will oc­cu­py this space. We shall talk again soon.