Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Amid T&T’s de­creas­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion should be piv­ot­ed to the mar­itime sec­tor as the Gulf of Paria is suit­ed for a nat­ur­al deep-wa­ter har­bour, says for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Kevin Ram­nar­ine.

Ram­nar­ine said this at Mon­day’s UNC Bud­get con­sul­ta­tions in Ca­roni Cen­tral. He was among the pan­el­lists in­clud­ing MP Arnold Ram, agri­cul­tur­ist Don­ny Rogers and MP David Lee.

Among the chal­lenges fac­ing T&T, Ram­nar­ine said, was a “mas­sive drop in for­eign re­serves.”

The Gov­ern­ment’s an­swer in­volved bor­row­ing US dol­lars and that would lead to a debt cri­sis for oth­ers ahead, he said.

Ram­nar­ine said oil pro­duc­tion “is on its way to San Fer­nan­do’s Roodal ceme­tery” with the low­est lev­els since 1937, and gas is at a 20-year low.

He al­so said that T&T was sink­ing in the quick­sand of crime.

Ram­nar­ine said if this con­tin­ued, it would be very dif­fi­cult to turn back. He said T&T had to in­crease non-en­er­gy ex­ports such as agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to mar­itime ser­vices but had to deal com­pre­hen­sive­ly with crime if it want­ed in­vest­ment.

He gave Dubai as an ex­am­ple of a coun­try that had di­ver­si­fied in­to ar­eas oth­er than oil and gas and how it was dri­ven by port and mar­itime ser­vices.

Ram­nar­ine added, “Based on my analy­sis of the last nine years, there’s tremen­dous po­ten­tial to di­ver­si­fy in­to the mar­itime ser­vices sec­tor be­cause T&T’s most valu­able nat­ur­al re­source might not be oil and gas—it might be the Gulf of Paria which is a calm piece of wa­ter, for nat­ur­al deep wa­ter har­bour.

“That could be­come the ba­sis for this new mar­itime econ­o­my and in some ways it al­ready is, and we have to con­tin­ue build­ing on that. That’s where I’d piv­ot di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to­wards,” he said.

He said T&T al­so need­ed to be­come more pro­duc­tive in agri­cul­ture and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion al­so in­volved food pro­duc­tion but farm­ers were al­so af­fect­ed by crime.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Preysal Gov­ern­ment School, Sarah Ali, plead­ed for a school build­ing for stu­dents who were cur­rent­ly housed at a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

She said, “It’s al­most a decade we’re bat­tling elec­tric­i­ty is­sues, cramped class­es. Every term, stu­dents have to stay home two weeks as sew­er prob­lems need to be fixed, air con­di­tion­ing needs fix­ing, there’s no lunch room or cafe­te­ria. Where are funds al­lo­cat­ed for schools? What hap­pened to Preysal—don’t we be­long? We’ve pro­duced gems for T&T—we’re beg­ging, please, please.”

MP Ram vowed that the pri­or­i­ty of a UNC Gov­ern­ment would be to com­plete the school.

Rakjku­mar Sam­sun­dar said Ca­roni Cen­tral’s roads were ter­ri­bly di­lap­i­dat­ed.

”It’s (fit for) 50 years back when we had don­key carts, not for cars. Please some­one, help us here,” he said.