Dragon gas ‘jammin’ still’?

Three weeks from tomorrow, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago will be either Stuart Young or Kamla Persad-Bissessar. No doubt both already know their very top priorities must be the economy and crime which have been disastrous failures of the Keith Rowley administrations. Like most of the country, this column has already cele­brated the removal of the two ministers who headed finance and national security: Colm Imbert and Fitzgerald Hinds.

Hopefully, we will be spared a continuation of the failed last decade. Yes, folks. An entire decade.



And Dragon gas still in the air. Ten years ago, we first heard then-prime minister Dr Keith Rowley say Dragon gas coming from Venezuela to save Trinidad and Tobago’s economy. Remember that picture of Rowley and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, each in Conga lines in Caracas, dancing in celebration of the salvation that never came? And over the decade, Rowley kept pumping and peddling hope, rhapsodising recklessly to a waiting population, terming Dragon gas the “lifeblood” for Trini­dad and Tobago, describing a flimsy licence from the untrustworthy Maduro to produce the gas our “golden fleece”.

Remember that unforgettable spectacle of Rowley with his energy minister Stuart Young, both oozing with joy in public, absurdly holding up their “golden fleece” for the media: an enlarged photograph of the licence handed to them by Maduro. I warned, “this ‘golden fleece’ could turn out to be as fanciful as Greek mythology”. They still hoping.

After a meeting between T&T’s new Prime Minister, Stuart Young, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jamaica, Young reported Rubio as saying “we are not going to harm Trinidad and Tobago”. What reliability in that assurance when President Donald Trump betrays powerful long-standing allies and his own citizens with irrational and whimsical tariffication that will bring economic hardships to everyone? Worse, his administration considers the Maduro regime “an ­unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and promises punitive measures against any country doing business with it. We wish Stuart Young well as he runs the hope relay.

But it rankles that this nation has come to this pathetic pass. That a last message from a departing Rowley, delivered with impunity after ten years at the helm, is that the country’s “coo coo cooked” if we don’t get “Dragon gas”, controlled by a global pariah in Venezuela. Nothing more epitomises an abysmally failed tenure.

After 40 years in Parliament, is this what Keith Rowley hitched this country’s fortunes to, singing “Dragon gas coming” for ten years instead of diversifying the nation’s economy which was the path laid out more plainly than ever at the very start of his tenure? Folks, the nation was facing its most serious challenge since Independence, its main earner, the energy sector, facing an almost existential challenge from structural changes in the global industry causing a massive 40% drop in revenue of $20 billion—from $57 billion to $37 billion! This reality was there for Rowley to see at the start. Economic diversification was more imperative than at any other time in the nation’s history. “We either diversify or die,” I said.

Well, we are dying, because Rowley found diversification an “annoying” word, the most scandalously foolish statement since the dawn of modern democracy and the nation state. Here we are ten years later, starved of lifeblood foreign exchange without which we have neither economy nor society and would collapse into a failed state. And discussing forex distribution, while important, is not enough.

Any new prime minister after April 28, Kamla Persad-Bissessar or Stuart Young, could talk with banks and business about managing foreign exchange until the cows come home. They would be only “galaying”, as the great Lloyd Best would have said. Unless we have the stamina to develop new foreign revenue streams, as I have been preaching for the last ten years, we shall not emerge from the economic darkness into which we have been dumped by Rowley and his finance minister Colm Imbert.

Our reserves are now the lowest in 17 years, US$5.5 billion, most of it borrowed and which must be repaid in US dollars which we are not adequately earning. That is what politicians with no vision, plan or economic strategy produce.

The new prime minister, Young or Persad-Bissessar, should consider Barbados. Bridgetown puts us to shame. A low-income sugar monoculture at Independence in 1966, Barbados grew into a high-income nation, driven by tourism, the international trade and financial service sectors, and foreign direct-investment targeting renewable energy, the creative industry and agro-processing, among others, says a UN report.

Barbados’ real GDP accelerated from 1.7% in 2021 to 7.5% in 2022 and unlike T&T, which is yet to return to pre-pandemic growth levels, Barbados “is poised for sustained expansion of 3% in the short to medium term”, says the country’s Central Bank.

Meanwhile, Trinidad and Tobago is rated globally among the countries with the lowest GDP growth in 2024. We must move urgently to get out of the dump. We won’t, if all we do is keep “jammin’ still” with “­Dragon gas coming still”.

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