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I have spent the past cou­ple weeks de­bunk­ing some of the flawed eco­nom­ic ar­gu­ments re­lat­ed to our for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion that find their way in­to our na­tion­al dis­cus­sion. To­day we con­tin­ue in that vein.

It bears re­peat­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign re­serves con­tin­ue their re­lent­less de­cline, hav­ing fall­en to US$4.806 bil­lion at the end of Ju­ly 2025, tak­ing us back to lev­els pre­dat­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

Giv­en this sta­tis­tic, the eco­nom­ic es­tab­lish­ment has co­a­lesced around a fa­mil­iar re­frain: we must di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my to earn more for­eign ex­change. This propo­si­tion, re­peat­ed with re­li­gious fer­vor by lo­cal econ­o­mists in news­pa­per columns and tele­vi­sion in­ter­views, has be­come the ac­cept­ed wis­dom for ad­dress­ing our for­eign ex­change cri­sis.