CONTACT Magazine (Vol.18 No.1 – April 2018)

transforming t&T
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The idea that each listener
must become an agent of
change was something of a
novelty
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The
problem
We don’t really
need to be told
that the Trinidad
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and Tobago economy
is over-dependent
on the energy sector.
Diversification is one of the
buzzwords that have been in the air for
decades. Plans and visions, speeches
and policy briefs, have come and gone
over the years. But somehow the latest
energy pricing crisis, combined with
falling oil and gas production, still
managed to catch us by surprise and
unprepared, still dependent on the
wells and the rigs to pump out the
national patrimony and monetise it, so
as to keep us in the style to which we
have become accustomed.
The horror story that has unfolded
in the last couple of years does not need
detailing again here: the disastrous
fall in energy revenue, the decline in
output, the foreign exchange shortage,
the gas shortfall, the budget deficits,
the slashing of government spending,
the erosion of savings, the piling up of
debt.
Once the severity of the situation
became really clear, it was too late to
avoid this crisis. Even if the recent
cautious optimism about energy price
gains and improved oil and gas output
turns out to be justified, the
risks of dependence have
been demonstrated
for all to see.
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We’ve had the final
warning. To continue with
business as usual is too great a
gamble. The nation has to adapt itself
to sadly straitened circumstances,
and quickly. It has to learn again to
live within its reduced means. In the
process, it will finally have to face up to
the challenge of diversification; and to
the larger issue of transforming itself
– its economy, its society, its culture
– into something more efficient, more
rational, more productive and more
sustainable, than it is now.
Obstacles
One hurdle is that these heavy abstract
nouns have been around so long and
have become so familiar that they no
longer mean very much. They fly in
one ear and out the other. They fall
to the ground like hunks of dead wood.
Diversification. Thud. Innovation. Thud.
Transformation. Clunk. Lip service is paid,
brows are duly furrowed, and then we
return to business as usual.
Another hurdle is that there is no
clear definition of what these key words
mean in our national context. Diversify
what into what? Transform ourselves into
who? What would a diversified economy
and a transformed Trinidad and Tobago
actually look like? There is as yet no
common understanding, no shared
vision, about what these
words and ideas
would involve
if they
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were taken
seriously: and no
sense of what anyone
should start doing about them.
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Plans and visions
It is not that explanations are lacking.
The planosphere is swimming in plans,
policies, briefs, visions and speeches. There
is Vision 2030 above all, aka the Draft
National Development Strategy 2016-
2030, which is available online, though
few people seem to know what is in it.
There is an array of documents ranging
from a National Innovation Strategy and
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Trinidad
and Tobago Chamber
of Industry and Commerce
www.chamber.org.tt/contact-magazine