Dr Bhoe Tewarie

The Prime Min­is­ter was clear and di­rect about year two of her Gov­ern­ment: “More jobs and eco­nom­ic growth and a ruth­less re­sponse to crim­i­nals...” That is the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­mit­ment. But what kind of jobs, where will the growth come from and what about jus­tice and trust?

This Gov­ern­ment came in on a crime wave in ear­ly 2025. The largest mur­der count ever was record­ed in 2024. This Gov­ern­ment, with the help of a State of Emer­gency (SoE), brought mur­ders down by al­most half (42 per cent). But the coun­try is get­ting rest­less again on crime be­cause it is ubiq­ui­tous, repet­i­tive, per­sis­tent, and the fear of crime is ris­ing again be­cause peo­ple are feel­ing strong­ly now that what we are deal­ing with here is more than po­lice and thief. They think part of the prob­lem is the po­lice ser­vice it­self—a bad lega­cy built over decades. Three re­cent in­ci­dents have raised anx­i­ety lev­els, in­creased con­cern and prompt­ed sus­pi­cions.

The first is the killing of Joshua Sama­roo and the shoot­ing of his girl­friend Ka­ia Sealy, re­sult­ing in paral­y­sis. The video of that in­ci­dent al­tered the per­cep­tion of the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the po­lice ver­sion of the sto­ry. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the shoot­ing was launched but we are still to be pro­vid­ed with the find­ings.

The sec­ond was the ex­e­cu­tion of Dan­ny Guer­ra, a quar­ry op­er­a­tor and hous­ing de­vel­op­er who was de­tained as a gang­ster un­der SoE pow­ers, and sub­se­quent ex­e­cu­tions which fol­lowed his own ex­e­cu­tion. It is dif­fi­cult to say what the Guer­ra ex­e­cu­tion and re­lat­ed mur­ders are re­al­ly about. But there are whis­pers.

And then came the as­sault on a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice sta­tion, the killing of po­lice of­fi­cer Anus­ka Ever­s­ley and the theft of all the guns in the ar­moury. Al­though the po­lice ser­vice has been on the ball with this one—ap­pre­hend­ed sus­pects, charged in­di­vid­u­als, re­cov­ered some of the weapons and changed lead­er­ship—ques­tions about the mo­tive, in­tend­ed plan for de­ploy­ment and who is be­hind it re­main.

Un­cer­tain­ties and doubts about the lev­el of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty risk raise ques­tions about how po­lice com­pe­tence, ca­pac­i­ty, com­plic­i­ty and gang­ster con­nec­tions in a cor­rupt so­ci­ety will be fur­ther test­ed when the SoE ends?

What about eco­nom­ic growth? The Cen­tral Bank says growth this year is now at 0.2 per cent and is al­most en­tire­ly de­pen­dent on en­er­gy. No oth­er sec­tor shows strength.

The World Bank an­tic­i­pates 0.7 per cent in 2026 and a sig­nif­i­cant jump in 2027 to 3.2 per cent, but again, based on en­er­gy pro­duc­tion in­creas­es from Man­a­tee and high en­er­gy prices. Both the Cen­tral Bank Re­port and the World Bank Re­port were pub­lished in April 2026.

What must wor­ry the Prime Min­is­ter is that now that her Gov­ern­ment has made it through one year po­lit­i­cal­ly, it still has four months of ex­e­cu­tion on the 2026 bud­get, and then a new bud­get in Sep­tem­ber 2026 to get the coun­try through 2027. If things work out well, we may have more nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion by then. If things hap­pen at a slow­er pace, an­oth­er bud­get for the 2028 fis­cal year will have to be pre­sent­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2027 with new nat­ur­al gas still to flow.

So, how are we go­ing to pre­pare our econ­o­my for the 2028 wind­fall? What are we go­ing to do in the two in­ter­ven­ing years that will al­low us to re­al­ly lever­age the com­ing wind­fall in a mean­ing­ful way? Be­cause we have been through a cy­cle of booms and busts be­fore and af­ter each bust, we end up back to square one.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is in a po­si­tion to break that cy­cle of en­er­gy de­pen­den­cy. But on­ly if she fo­cus­es ded­i­cat­ed­ly on ex­port-ori­ent­ed in­vest­ment in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor; on AI tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven re­forms that save mon­ey, in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy, boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and spawn busi­ness­es be­fore new en­er­gy wind­fall rev­enue be­gins to flow. If we fail to do this now, the en­er­gy rev­enue will be de­plet­ed as fast as it flows in.

There are some good signs. The sod-turn­ing for a ho­tel in South and the roll­out of Ver­i­fy TT.

The Prime Min­is­ter says she wants to move away from makeshift and tem­po­rary jobs. But the 15,000 jobs cre­at­ed in her first year are pub­lic sec­tor jobs which add to re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, al­ready 93 per cent of the bud­get. So what we re­al­ly need are pri­vate sec­tor non-en­er­gy in­vest­ments which bring in for­eign ex­change and cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs at no cost to the tax­pay­er.

Where we get the growth from and the kinds of jobs we cre­ate and the forex earn­ing com­po­nent are cen­tral to a new equa­tion.