At 64, T&T is richer, but moving backwards

On Au­gust 31, 2026, Trinidad and To­ba­go marked 64 years of In­de­pen­dence. An­niver­saries in­vite cel­e­bra­tion, but in­de­pen­dence al­so de­mands an ac­count­ing. Af­ter three decades of en­er­gy booms, in­dus­tri­al clo­sures and re­peat­ed promis­es of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, where are we mov­ing as a coun­try? Are we pro­gress­ing or re­gress­ing?

The hon­est an­swer is un­com­fort­able. Com­pared with 1996, Trinidad and To­ba­go is wealth­i­er, and un­em­ploy­ment is much low­er. Com­pared with our own high-wa­ter mark a decade ago, how­ev­er, the econ­o­my has moved back­wards. We cre­at­ed sub­stan­tial progress, but failed to re­new the pro­duc­tive base that fi­nanced it.

The long view proves both sides of that ver­dict. Us­ing World Bank con­stant-price da­ta, re­al GDP per capi­ta in 2025 was more than twice its 1996 lev­el, yet about 19 per cent be­low its 2014 peak. A cal­cu­la­tion from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) lat­est se­ries puts to­tal re­al GDP in 2025 at 17.5 per cent be­low 2014 lev­els; the CSO al­so re­ports a 0.5 per cent con­trac­tion in 2025. The of­fi­cial un­em­ploy­ment rate was 16.3 per cent in 1996; it was 5.4 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2026, al­though labour-force par­tic­i­pa­tion was on­ly 55.1 per cent.