In two months, T&T will mark 60 years as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try. T&T was the sec­ond coun­try in Cari­com to be giv­en its in­de­pen­dence fol­low­ing the failed at­tempt at a West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion and was pre­ced­ed by a few weeks by Ja­maica. No­tice I said post the failed fed­er­a­tion be­cause Haiti, a mem­ber of Cari­com, was the first coun­try to gain its in­de­pen­dence.

So, both Ja­maica and T&T will this year turn 60. Six­ty is, for many peo­ple in the Caribbean, the re­tire­ment age, an age when one hopes that you would have made some­thing of your lives, have con­tributed to the up­lift­ing of your fam­i­ly and so­ci­ety and you would have made the place bet­ter than when you met it.

For coun­tries, 60 is still a rel­a­tive­ly young age but one which has al­lowed suf­fi­cient time to chart a course of progress and op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a bet­ter life, a good life for its peo­ple.

At 60, we have a Ja­maica that is clear­ly proud of its achieve­ments, is the largest-sized and pop­u­lat­ed is­land in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and has been see­ing more eco­nom­ic suc­cess than it has had in its his­to­ry with low­er un­em­ploy­ment rates, strong fis­cal per­for­mance, sus­tained growth rates and look­ing for­ward to fi­nal­ly achiev­ing its po­ten­tial.

T&T con­tin­ues to limp along with lit­tle con­fi­dence in the fu­ture, as it has seen so much of its re­sources squan­dered away by ad­min­is­tra­tions that have nei­ther had the ca­pac­i­ty nor the in­ter­est in tru­ly mak­ing the coun­try the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house it can be. Such is the lack of con­fi­dence that the present ad­min­is­tra­tion has been silent on any plans to cel­e­brate the mile­stone, hop­ing for its con­tin­ued elec­toral suc­cess based on an op­po­si­tion that seems in­ca­pable of mount­ing a con­vinc­ing cam­paign show­ing that it de­serves an­oth­er shot at be­ing in pow­er.

But for all of T&T’s mis­steps, its poor gov­er­nance, its wastage and poor de­ci­sion-mak­ing, the coun­try is still well-po­si­tioned to play a cru­cial role in what I see as a decade of op­por­tu­ni­ty for Cari­com to move its peo­ple to a place of sus­tain­able pros­per­i­ty and uni­ty.

There has nev­er been a time when Cari­com has had more eco­nom­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties than right now.

For the first time, we have growth in Ja­maica, T&T, Guyana, Suri­name and Bar­ba­dos hap­pen­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

For a long time, we have had Ja­maica in eco­nom­ic de­cline or at best, stand­still, Guyana has been in eco­nom­ic trou­ble al­most from the start of it be­com­ing a co­op­er­a­tive re­pub­lic, Suri­name has had a weak econ­o­my and T&T has been cycli­cal, rid­ing the wave of high oil and then gas and petro­chem­i­cal prices.

We now have a rare eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty at hand for the re­gion. Guyana has had ex­plo­ration suc­cess that very few coun­tries in the world can be­gin to match, Suri­name is fol­low­ing and be­lieved to be part of that basin. With a com­bined pop­u­la­tion of just over one mil­lion peo­ple, these two South Amer­i­can Cari­com na­tions have suf­fi­cient re­sources to en­sure that re­gard­less of what hap­pens in the com­ing decades, they will have enough mon­ey to sig­nif­i­cant­ly change the lives of their pop­u­la­tions.

The chal­lenge, how­ev­er, is whether the two coun­tries and the rest of the re­gion have to po­lit­i­cal will and fore­sight to see that this could be a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­gion to be­come a place of sus­tained eco­nom­ic growth.

The re­al­i­ty is that nei­ther Guyana nor Suri­name has the ca­pac­i­ty, the skill sets nor the abil­i­ty to cre­ate as much val­ue from the en­er­gy dis­cov­er­ies as they can with the as­sis­tance of T&T.

Yes, I know there is a sen­ti­ment in Guyana that T&T na­tion­als and com­pa­nies are seek­ing to ben­e­fit from what is Guyanese largess. Yes, that is true and there should be no shame in it.

T&T com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als want to make mon­ey from the dis­cov­er­ies and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana. Exxon, the Amer­i­can com­pa­ny, wants to do that too.

They are not drilling and risk­ing cap­i­tal and de­vel­op­ing the oil and gas sec­tor be­cause they like Guyana, they are do­ing it be­cause there is mon­ey to be made. What we must want is for as much of that mon­ey as pos­si­ble to re­main in Guyana first­ly, and sec­ond­ly in the re­gion.

That is the ma­tu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is need­ed. For all the seem­ing bad blood be­tween Guyana and T&T, the re­al­i­ty is that pri­or to this find, Guyana was more like­ly to ben­e­fit from any ex­cess T&T or the re­gion had to of­fer than from non-re­gion­al coun­tries.

Sim­i­lar­ly, as Guyana and Suri­name de­vel­op ca­pac­i­ty in their en­er­gy sec­tors, there are re­al pos­si­bil­i­ties for nearshoring our economies to pro­vide both sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and new forms of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The ten-year win­dow that I speak of is be­cause col­lec­tive­ly, ex­cept for Haiti, T&T, Guyana, Ja­maica and Suri­name, the rest of the re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, is just over a mil­lion.

The chal­lenge for Cari­com is that the in­tra-re­gion­al trade has not oc­curred in the mea­sure need­ed. Apart from some man­u­fac­tur­ing in T&T and to a less­er ex­tent Ja­maica, the re­gion has been es­sen­tial­ly do­ing the same thing, sell­ing tourism and in re­turn im­port­ing every­thing from out of the re­gion to both sup­port the tourism and do­mes­tic sec­tors.

This has led to the leak­age of forex and oth­er re­sources out­side of the Cari­com. With the land space and now the eco­nom­ic re­sources, we must en­cour­age the re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor, not gov­ern­ment, to go af­ter the agri­cul­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties, to pro­duce at scale and to meet the de­mands of the re­gion­al mar­ket with the ex­cess for ex­tra-re­gion­al ex­ports.

We must al­low fi­nal­ly for the free move­ment of Cari­com cit­i­zens and al­low their skills and ex­pe­ri­ence to bring to bear on the prob­lems and op­por­tu­ni­ties in the re­gion.

We must de­vel­op the re­gion­al stock ex­change and se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er again the pos­si­bil­i­ties of clos­er in­te­gra­tion of the fi­nan­cial sys­tems.

This can­not be done with­out vi­sion­ary po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and a clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the peo­ple of the re­gion.

Cari­com has con­sis­tent­ly failed to meet its man­date. A lot of it has had to do with the sheer lack of re­sources.

The re­sources are be­ing found, the tal­ent is there, but is the po­lit­i­cal will and acu­men avail­able?