Despite drop in oil, gas earnings… T&T economy still looks to energy sector
Even as his recent report on the performance of Trinidad and Tobago’s extractive industries point to a decline in their revenue, going forward, the country’ Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young, speaking at the virtual launch of the Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TTEITI) report, covering the performance of 2018 has said that the country’s economy will continue to look to the energy sector as a “pillar’ in pursuit of the twin-island Republic’s economic recovery from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking on Friday June 4 at the virtual launch of the report, Young dealt primarily with the challenges arising out of the pandemic and the roles which the extractive industries are expected to play in the country’s economic upturn, going forward. Young said in his virtual presentation that “the revenue from the energy and mining sectors will act as pillars to our economic recovery.”
Asserting that the TTEITI report furnishes independent verification of how much has been earned from the extractive sectors while highlighting areas that need to be addressed in order to capture the right value from the country’s resources, Stuart said that it was important “that citizens have access to this information as the government has always supported transparency and accountable management of the extractive sectors.”
Trinidad & Tobago’s EITI provides insights into the respective performances of the energy and mining/quarrying sectors, proffering insights on revenue trends and tendering recommendations on how the government can approach effecting repairs to deficient systems in order to realise greater returns and improve its data management and audit and assurance environment.
The recently released 2018 EITI Report’s critical findings, while covering the 2018 fiscal year, includes what the steering committee says is “unaudited and unreconciled information” for the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years in an effort to place “more up-to-date tax and royalty information in the public domain.
According to the contents of the report, unaudited figures for the 2019-2020 period point to a declining trend in revenue. The report indicates that oil and gas revenue for the 2019-2020 period declined by 54%, attributing this, primarily, to royalties
Just how vulnerable much of the Caribbean remains to economies that continue to be heavily dependent on tourism is reflected in a recent report published by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) which puts the financial cost of the still rampaging Covid-19 virus at a staggering US$33.9 billion.
The WTTC’s annual Economic Impact Report (EIR) states that travel and tourism’s contribution to the Caribbean’s gross domestic product plummeted from $58.4 billion (14.1 percent) in 2019 to $24.5 billion in 2020, a having declined by 46% from TT$3.4 billion in 2019 to TT$1.7 billion last year. The share of profit the country earned from production sharing contracts also slid 20 per cent from TT$2.2 billion in 2019 to TT$1.8 billion last year.
Covid-19 toll on Caribbean tourism US$33.9 billion and counting - WITTC report
staggering 58%, far exceeding the global average, the report said.
Arguably the most telling immediate-term blow inflicted on the region’s tourism sector is reflected in the virtually immediate-term loss of 680,000 jobs in the sector across the Caribbean. The report also found that the number of people employed in the region’s travel and tourism sector slipped from 2.76 million in 2019 to 2.08 million last year, a decline of 24.7 %.
The economies of the countries in the region that fell victim to the decline in the tourism industry were also affected in other ways, the WTTC report says, Domestic visitor spending slipped by 49.6 % while international visitor spending fell by 68 %.
As measures designed to seek to rein in the spread of the pandemic begin to take root in the region, however, several countries have moved to restart their respective tourism industries. Allied to this has been the availability of new data indicating that the majority of departures scheduled from the United States this year are destined for the Caribbean, a circumstance that promises to hasten recovery of the region’s tourism industry.