Trinidad and Tobago industrial policy 1959-2008

Trinidad and Tobago is the primary supplier of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to the United States. How did this twin island nation state with less than 0.5 per cent of the world s natural gas reserves, establish itself as a world class gas export hub, also becoming the world s largest exporter of commodity chemicals methanol and ammonia? Wendell Mottley answers these questions in Trinidad and Tobago Industrial Policy. In examining how the resulting accretion of wealth has affected the social and political polity of Trinidad and Tobago, Mottley traces the resource-led development in a democratically emerging political economy while analyzing the policy errors and new directions for the future. This book differs from others on the subject of natural resource development by examining the experience of a democracy not an autocracy. Mottley reveals, as only an active participant could, how fragmented the development of Trinidad and Tobago s industrial policy was experimental, subject to reverses, and aided by the sheer luck if good timing and the intervention of talented individuals. Combining his observations in his native Trinidad and Tobago with a rigorous and illustrative economic and financial analysis born of his own scholarship as an economist and his vantage point as an international investment banker, Mottley presents a plan for Trinidad and Tobago s sustainable economic future while offering a solid contribution to the literature on natural resource based development. Engaging and provocative, Trinidad and Tobago Industrial Policy will be equally valuable to players in the international energy industry as well as students of development economics.