It has been a busy week. First, the res­ig­na­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, the ap­point­ment of his re­place­ment, and a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle. There was bare­ly time to warm a min­is­te­r­i­al chair as the gen­er­al elec­tion date came the next day and a se­ries of pro­nounce­ments there­after.

What will the gen­er­al elec­tion change, apart from pro­vid­ing the coun­try with a dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tion? What must be done to make the coun­try more pro­duc­tive and im­prove eco­nom­ic per­for­mance? What is pre­vent­ing the coun­try from achiev­ing its po­ten­tial?

In 1997 there were 101 mur­ders. Then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day com­plained that he was at his wit’s end and that he did not know what more he could do to ad­dress the mur­der rate.

Then GDP amount­ed to $36.4 bil­lion, in­fla­tion was 3.7 per cent, un­em­ploy­ment was 15 per cent, net for­eign re­serves were $690 mil­lion US dol­lars and for­eign debt was $1.5 bil­lion US (26 per cent of GDP). Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10 bil­lion. Then came the com­ple­tion of At­lantic LNG and the ex­por­ta­tion of LNG.

By 2008 GDP had in­creased to over $150 bil­lion, in­fla­tion was over eight per cent, un­em­ploy­ment had de­creased to 5.8 per cent, net re­serves amount­ed to $9 bil­lion US dol­lars, and there was a Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) with a bal­ance of $3 bil­lion US.

For­eign debt amount­ed to $8.9 bil­lion (6.4% of GDP). Gov­ern­ment re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for that year was $38 bil­lion with a $15 bil­lion sur­plus. $5.5 bil­lion of this sur­plus went to the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund, $6.8 bil­lion to the HSF and $2.5 bil­lion went to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund. This rep­re­sents an eco­nom­ic high point com­pared to what came af­ter.

De­spite the in­creased wealth, there were 500 mur­ders in 2008. In ret­ro­spect, 2008 was a high point, a wa­ter­shed year. Good times do not last for­ev­er.

The boom end­ed in 2014. Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion be­gan to de­cline in 2012 but was masked by buoy­ant nat­ur­al gas and petro­chem­i­cal prices. Net in­ter­na­tion­al re­serves have been de­clin­ing steadi­ly since 2014. The 17 years (2009-2025) can be de­scribed as the “deficit era,” as gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture ex­ceed­ed rev­enue for six­teen of those years.

As a re­sult, the debt-to-GDP ra­tio has been ris­ing faster than the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic growth rate. This ra­tio is a mea­sure of a coun­try’s cred­it­wor­thi­ness, of its abil­i­ty to bor­row. As this ra­tio has in­creased, T&T’s cred­it rat­ing has de­clined to one notch above junk bond sta­tus, by on­ly one of the three ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing agen­cies.

For­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and be­come prob­lem­at­ic. This re­flects the en­er­gy sec­tor’s weak­er earn­ings. Banks have been re­duc­ing cred­it card for­eign cur­ren­cy avail­abil­i­ty as a stop­gap mea­sure. The mur­der rate has con­tin­ued to rise, set­ting a record in 2024. These de­vel­op­ments are cu­mu­la­tive and will damp­en busi­ness con­fi­dence.

This gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign meets T&T on the cusp of an eco­nom­ic precipice. The na­tion­al busi­ness mod­el has been based on nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and the ex­pec­ta­tion that the gains from this sec­tor will dri­ve the rest of the econ­o­my.

De­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion means that oth­er sec­tors must im­prove to com­pen­sate for this sec­tor’s de­clin­ing per­for­mance, but this tran­si­tion will take time. Man­a­tee will im­prove pro­duc­tion when it comes on stream in 2027. But what hap­pens af­ter Man­a­tee? Oth­er coun­tries have had to make this tran­si­tion, and it will take time. But we must start to­day and fo­cus on the al­ter­na­tives.

To para­phrase Ein­stein, to over­come the chal­lenges we cre­at­ed, we need new ap­proach­es and thought process­es to over­come the chal­lenges. New faces or new peo­ple will not nec­es­sar­i­ly make this hap­pen. De­ploy­ing dif­fer­ent skill sets and build­ing ca­pac­i­ty is crit­i­cal. Im­prov­ing the coun­try’s per­for­mance re­quires sig­nif­i­cant in­no­va­tion in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.

Since “gov­ern­ment ser­vices” im­pact our every­day lives, we need to make those ser­vices eas­i­er to ac­cess, cost-ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient. Mean­ing that we need to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness. How­ev­er, the promise of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion has not made the coun­try any more ef­fi­cient.

One can­not im­prove the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance with­out im­prov­ing its sys­tems and process­es. Yet there has been no com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme to achieve this ob­jec­tive in 35 years. Oth­er coun­tries such as Sin­ga­pore, Aus­tralia and Es­to­nia have shown what can be achieved and how. What is miss­ing is po­lit­i­cal will.

Don­ald Trump and Elon Musk’s blun­der­buss ap­proach demon­strates how this should not be done. Sim­i­lar­ly, in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira’s ef­fort to raise the mat­ter for de­bate may have been well-in­ten­tioned but was un­der­mined by the ab­sence of mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns are pri­mar­i­ly based on ma­nip­u­lat­ing emo­tions and sen­ti­ments with win­dow dress­ing and dis­trac­tions rather than root-and-branch re­form. Few peo­ple pay at­ten­tion to the fine print, the sub­stance and the achiev­abil­i­ty of what is promised. The re­sult is that few promis­es are ever kept. Hence politi­cians avoid spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able, re­al­is­tic, time-bound ob­jec­tives.

Cre­at­ing and achiev­ing change is dif­fi­cult and can­not be achieved with­out re­form­ing and im­prov­ing the pub­lic ser­vice. Yet this is un­like­ly to be ad­dressed se­ri­ous­ly. The cur­rent ev­i­dence of this shal­low ap­proach is the promise of a Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy. The Na­tion­al Hous­ing Au­thor­i­ty (NHA) be­came the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). Yet all the de­fi­cien­cies of the NHA are re­peat­ed in the HDC.

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