Acknowledgements

• Author: Wendell Mottley
• Profession: New York-based Investment Banker having previously served as executive director of the company which eventually became the pivot of Trinidad and Tobago s natural gas-led industrialization and as Minister of Finance, credited with playing a decisive role in setting Trinidad and Tobago on a sustained path of growth from 1994 onwards
• Pages: 9-11

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book grew out of a lifelong interest in the remarkable story

of my small country’s economic development. That interest has

always been shared by my great friend, Cambridge University college

mate, fellow athlete, and former Central Bank of Trinidad and

Tobago governor, Dr Euric Bobb. More than any, his understanding,

patience with a first time would-be author and guidance at the early

stages of the manuscript’s development, allowed me to overcome

several initial frustrations.

Although I take responsibility for its content, omissions and flaws,

I must say that this book has truly been a collaboration. Dare I say

a national effort! This was a story waiting to be told in all its

complexity. Others had previously told parts of the story. However,

I was welcomed by so many of the significant players in this tale,

anxious that the truth about them and their institutions’ struggles to

insert Trinidad and Tobago into the big world of international trade

in petrochemicals, LNG and metals, be available to future

generations.

Euric recommended me to Nancy Birdsall, President of the

Center for Global Development (CGDEV), one of Washington’s

Think Tanks, and former Executive Vice-President at the Inter-

American Development Bank (IDB). In 2003, Nancy welcomed me

as a visiting fellow at CGDEV and gave me the space to reflect and

the opportunity to interact with top international scholars who

assisted me in structuring this account of Trinidad and Tobago’s

energy-led development.

The book’s long gestation, between then and 2008, is attributable

to my part-time authorship competing with full-time demands of

my present investment banking career.

This book is not intended to be a scholarly text. Rather, I hope

it will find readership, first among Caribbean nationals seeking

insight as to how Trinidad and Tobago’s (T&T) energy-led industrial

path (the T&T model) gave rise to the present mixed outcome, that