The par­ty and po­lit­i­cal leader that wins the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion will meet sev­er­al ex­is­ten­tial chal­lenges when he takes the oath of of­fice on April 29. The glob­al trade en­vi­ron­ment and geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion have be­come more un­set­tled. Pres­i­dent Trump wields a big stick and speaks loud­ly to those coun­tries brave enough to fol­low an in­de­pen­dent for­eign pol­i­cy.

Af­ter “Lib­er­a­tion Day” on April 2, the USA would have in­stalled a new tar­iff regime, which could start a glob­al trade war and trig­ger a world­wide re­ces­sion.

These are new chal­lenges that com­pli­cate an al­ready packed agen­da. De­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor as the main dri­ver of eco­nom­ic growth has placed the coun­try in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion. The in­stalled plant ca­pac­i­ty for con­vert­ing nat­ur­al gas in­to ex­portable prod­ucts re­quires a dai­ly nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion of 4.4 bil­lion cu­bic feet (4.4 bcf) to keep all the plants open and op­er­at­ing at max­i­mum pro­duc­tion. Cur­rent dai­ly vol­umes are av­er­ag­ing 2.5 bcf.

Gas wells are not re­new­able. Con­tin­u­ous ex­plo­ration is manda­to­ry to dis­cov­er new wells to re­place the gas ex­tract­ed or to in­crease pro­duc­tion.

The key state en­er­gy-sec­tor en­ter­pris­es, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, do not have the deep pock­ets, nor have they as­sem­bled the ex­per­tise to un­der­take the work nec­es­sary to find new re­serves. This leaves the coun­try de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy ma­jors who op­er­ate in T&T and their in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment de­ci­sions. Find­ing or ex­ploit­ing new wells must be done in co­op­er­a­tion with these en­er­gy ma­jors.

The threat of US sanc­tions is uni­ver­sal in reach and scope and al­so af­fects the de­ci­sions of multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies. There­fore, there is no se­ri­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty that T&T “can go it alone.”

This con­text guides the de­ci­sion-mak­ing and ne­go­ti­a­tions re­lat­ing to any oil or gas field. The sit­u­a­tion be­comes more com­pli­cat­ed when the tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments and dy­nam­ic mar­ket con­di­tions are con­sid­ered. Mak­ing in­vest­ment de­ci­sions takes a long time in the en­er­gy sec­tor, as de­ci­sions in­volve bil­lions. There is no mag­ic wand. Nor will a change in gov­ern­ment or prime min­is­ter change the ob­jec­tive re­al­i­ties. Progress re­quires many steps be­fore the ben­e­fits can be reaped.

There are pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor, and there are long-term chal­lenges as well. The key project that will have an im­pact is Man­a­tee, which is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce its first gas in 2027. Un­less there is some dra­mat­ic geopo­lit­i­cal event which will in­crease the price of oil or gas, there is no mag­ic bul­let that will in­crease this coun­try’s GDP in the short run apart from ef­fi­cien­cy or pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains in every sec­tor.

The cur­rent gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign­ing is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fa­cil­i­tate a wider dis­cus­sion and pub­lic en­gage­ment about im­prov­ing the coun­try’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the changes or de­ci­sions nec­es­sary to make this a re­al­i­ty. The ev­i­dence that this will hap­pen is weak. There have been no mean­ing­ful at­tempts to ad­dress or en­gage cit­i­zens on the key de­ci­sions re­quired to achieve change or eco­nom­ic progress. There is no mes­sian­ic sav­iour.

With less than 30 days left be­fore the elec­tion date, cit­i­zens have no idea what ei­ther par­ty will do to ad­dress the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. One would ex­pect a for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance to un­der­stand the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion.

Mr Vish­nu Dhan­paul’s first words as the new Fi­nance Min­is­ter were that there would be no “hard­ships” un­der his stew­ard­ship. The mes­sage was busi­ness as usu­al. We could pre­sume that he meant un­til April 28, as he could not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly ex­pect to know his po­si­tion af­ter the elec­tion.

This un­der­scores the meet­ing with the bank­ing sec­tor by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and the Fi­nance Min­is­ter last week to dis­cuss the al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change. It may have been a good pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty, but it made no progress on the key is­sues un­der­ly­ing the short­age of for­eign ex­change. No changes were an­nounced af­ter the meet­ing. For­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty can on­ly im­prove if ex­ports or ex­port prices in­crease. If this is not hap­pen­ing, the ex­change rate regime must be ad­dressed to pro­vide a mar­ket-based so­lu­tion.

In Feb­ru­ary at a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Dr Row­ley ful­mi­nat­ed against the slow process by state agen­cies, say­ing they were too “la­bo­ri­ous, slow or just too un­car­ing … be­cause of our in­abil­i­ty to hold peo­ple ac­count­able at every lev­el.” He ad­vanced this as a key fac­tor which de­layed projects dur­ing his tenure in of­fice. He had a point. An en­er­gy sec­tor en­tre­pre­neur once com­plained to me that ex­e­cut­ing a suc­cess­ful en­er­gy project re­quired more than 100 per­mis­sions from dif­fer­ent agen­cies.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment, through its agen­cies and their sys­tems, de­ter­mines how easy or hard it is for cit­i­zens or in­vestors to do busi­ness. This means that the agen­cies must be re­sourced and man­aged to en­sure they are re­spon­sive to their “clients”. This does not re­quire a “Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy”. This idea on­ly ad­dress­es the im­ple­men­ta­tion of gov­ern­ment projects and ig­nores the re­al source of wealth gen­er­a­tion, cit­i­zens and pri­vate busi­ness­es.

Mak­ing these agen­cies ef­fec­tive re­quires that they be ad­e­quate­ly staffed, re­sourced and ori­ent­ed to a cul­ture of suc­cess­ful per­for­mance. A po­lit­i­cal par­ty with no plan, vi­sion or com­pe­tent man­agers to ad­dress this short­com­ing will achieve noth­ing dur­ing its time in gov­ern­ment.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness.