Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has made it clear that re­lief from the pres­sures of a de­flat­ed econ­o­my can­not be ex­pect­ed un­til two to three years from the present.

His ba­sis for such a pro­jec­tion is lodged in the con­tin­u­ing de­pen­dence of the econ­o­my on the en­er­gy sec­tor. And this is so both in terms of the present low state of the coun­try’s re­serves and on the re­al­i­ty of T&T hav­ing to de­pend on the fluc­tu­a­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al prices and geo-pol­i­tics, the lat­ter be­ing in dan­ger­ous flux, to sur­vive in the big bad world of en­er­gy.

The po­si­tion state­ment of the PM is not strange. Suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments of his par­ty have cast the coun­try’s fate al­most com­plete­ly in the en­er­gy sec­tor, with all its com­plex­i­ties re­gard­ing re-dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex earned, and the in­abil­i­ty to de­vel­op sec­tors which as­sist with the earn­ing of for­eign ex­change; it’s been la­belled as “di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion” away from com­plete de­pen­dence on en­er­gy and the con­se­quences of such de­pen­dence.

How­ev­er, cit­i­zens may now be won­der­ing if Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s state­ment of ex­pec­ta­tion means the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en up on the pro­jec­tions for en­gen­der­ing en­ter­prise and pro­duc­tion from the pri­vate sec­tor to as­sist the en­er­gy ex­port sec­tor rev­enue.

If that be the case, it gives con­cern about the op­ti­mism ex­pressed by Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon on her re­turn from a trade mis­sion abroad. She said then that the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is ad­vanc­ing and is ex­pect­ed to de­vel­op mus­cle and at­trac­tion in the for­eign mar­ket place.

There­fore, the mes­sage sent by the Trade Min­is­ter is that the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor can be­come ca­pa­ble of tak­ing up the slack caused by low pro­duc­tion and re­duced prices on the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy mar­ket.

Now it may be that PM Row­ley want­ed to damp­en ex­pec­ta­tions ahead of the pre­sen­ta­tion by his al­ways en­thu­si­as­tic and hope­ful Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

How­ev­er, as al­ways with mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion, mes­sages sent are open to var­ied in­ter­pre­ta­tions. One such un­in­tend­ed con­se­quence can con­vey a sense of colo­nial learned help­less­ness; an in­abil­i­ty to break free from our past.

The sense be­ing that we shall in­def­i­nite­ly be com­plete­ly de­pen­dent on how our econ­o­my has been his­tor­i­cal­ly struc­tured; that be­ing to sub-serve the in­ter­est of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan de­mands. Trans­lat­ed, that means our econ­o­my is stuck in be­ing a raw ma­te­r­i­al pro­duc­er for in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

The fact is that T&T and the Caribbean have not been the on­ly coun­tries, economies and peo­ple who have been left with that heavy bur­den of colo­nial de­pen­dence. One fact is that there has been some ef­fort to get out of the mode; but thus far we have not been able to break free of the stran­gle­hold.

An­oth­er fact, though, is that a num­ber of coun­tries and economies which were sim­i­lar­ly po­si­tioned have been able to es­cape the trap. The coun­tries of South-East Asia have been the best ex­am­ples of those who have been able to find their way out, and in a few in­stances, they were deep­er in colo­nial pro­duc­tion than we in the Caribbean were.

Let us hope that Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, his Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert and oth­ers will show us a new pas­sage out of the gloom.