When all is said and done by the Gov­ern­ment, the Op­po­si­tion, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and oth­ers who ex­am­ine and com­ment on the eco­nom­ic road ahead, the Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy an­nounce­ment of De­cem­ber 2025 points di­rect­ly to the state of the econ­o­my and the chal­lenges for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.

“The pos­i­tive ef­fect of high­er en­er­gy pro­duc­tion in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2025, dri­ven by two new nat­ur­al gas fields, may be par­tial­ly off­set by a non-en­er­gy sec­tor that is los­ing mo­men­tum across sev­er­al sub-sec­tors. This sug­gests that the do­mes­tic econ­o­my is still in need of sup­port to en­gen­der a sus­tained re­cov­ery.”

Stat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, with a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive at­tached, the Cen­tral Bank is say­ing that the eco­nom­ic align­ment of the post-colo­nial pe­ri­od re­mains un­changed. That means even if Trinidad and To­ba­go makes it through the rain and reign of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an out­break of war, and even if a long-term Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence is pro­cured, the im­me­di­ate and short terms still de­pend on us over­com­ing our post-colo­nial eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

Wrapped in­side that bun­dle is the re­quire­ment which fell on the coun­try af­ter gain­ing po­lit­i­cal In­de­pen­dence from Britain. That was and con­tin­ues to be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­shape the lo­cal econ­o­my and so­ci­ety in­to one which can spread from its orig­i­nal moor­ings in­to a cre­ative, pro­duc­tive one able to take on the chal­lenges of be­ing dy­nam­ic in an ever-chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

Achieve­ment of the ob­jec­tive is com­pound­ed by a world of hos­til­i­ty, with the po­ten­tial for war per­ma­nent­ly on the agen­da. The Cen­tral Bank’s re­port con­ser­v­a­tive­ly es­ti­mates the im­pact: “Geo-po­lit­i­cal ten­sions and trade pol­i­cy un­cer­tain­ties im­pact­ed in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy prices.”

One el­e­ment of the jour­ney for­ward is deeply im­mersed in mat­ters out­side of tech­ni­cal eco­nom­ic pro­ject­ed pre­scrip­tions, and more to do with the pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try, led by those elect­ed to gov­ern, tak­ing on the de­vel­op­men­tal chal­lenges of na­tion­hood.

Over the pe­ri­od of In­de­pen­dence, there has been a re­luc­tance to mount the chal­lenges from a plat­form of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The so­ci­ety, in its dis­parate parts, has to learn to act col­lec­tive­ly as a na­tion de­ter­mined to move away from the in­ter­minable and sense­less po­lit­i­cal pulling and tug­ging and at­tempts at one-up­man­ship. Of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance to our fu­ture state are the at­ti­tudes and op­er­a­tions of both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.

The elec­torate has set­tled the is­sue for the next five years; the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and its as­so­ci­at­ed coali­tion of part­ners are in of­fice. The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment now has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to prove it­self to be a gov­ern­ment in the mak­ing.

Non­sense old talk, acidic ex­changes not on­ly be­tween lead­ers of the par­ties, but those which at­tack and seek to di­min­ish the in­tegri­ty and vi­a­bil­i­ty of the na­tion and its peo­ple, have no pos­i­tive ef­fect. For think­ing peo­ple, neg­a­tive sig­nals are raised about the abil­i­ty of ei­ther side to suc­cess­ful­ly gov­ern the coun­try to­wards the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ob­jec­tives re­quired.

In­creas­ing­ly, cit­i­zens at all lev­els of so­ci­ety must al­so take up their Ja­haa­ji and Georgie bun­dles and walk with them to a pro­duc­tive fu­ture in the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic spheres of ex­is­tence.

There is no need for any­one to point out the un­pro­duc­tive na­ture of the in­ternecine con­flicts when there is se­ri­ous work to be done.