Economist:
Dangerous to depend on oil and gas
By Driselle Ramjohn
Trinidad Express
Port Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
08 26 07
Trinidad and Tobago must move away from its dependence
on oil and gas or it is likely to face another
economic bust, said Dennis Pantin, head of the
Department of Economics, University of the West
Indies, St Augustine.
Pantin made the statement at the Caribbean Money
Market Brokers (CMMB) annual budget seminar at
the Crowne Plaza hotel, Port of Spain, yesterday.
He said having a natural resource was sometimes
more of a curse than a blessing as countries became
solely dependent on the revenues from these reserves
and sustainable economic growth and development
was seldom achieved.
"The critical challenge we face is to exorcise
the resource curse which simply means we have to
find a way of using the opportunity of these few
sums of money which we are either receiving or
can potentially receive if we are able to ensure
that we can get our fair and just due from our
production and we have to find ways to invest this
in a range of sectors, both here and abroad," Pantin
said.
This
is necessary to ensure that "when-not
if but when" the hydrocarbon boom comes to
an end, it will not be as traumatic as it was for
this country in the late 1980s early 1990s when
it experienced an economic bust.
History will repeat itself if Trinidad and Tobago
does not learn from its mistakes of the past when
it experienced an oil and gas boom from 1972 to
1984.
"Basically, we live on borrowed time and
we need to accept that these are conditions that
prevail in the economy," Pantin said, adding
that economic transformation was necessary now.
Government should invest in overseas oil and gas
companies for when the country's reserves run out,
was one solution Pantin pointed out.
Minister in the Ministry of Finance Conrad Enill,
at the CMMB seminar maintained that there were
significant oil and gas reserves in the ground
and that further exploration would add to the country's
reserves despite the Ryder Scott report which indicated
that Trinidad and Tobago only had 12 years of gas
reserves left.
Trinidad
Express
Saturday, August 25th 2007
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