An Address by the Honourable Patrick Manning Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago At the Gala Dinner Hyatt Regency

I am very pleased indeed to have this opportunity on the occasion of this dinner and the successful culmination of the Plenary Session of the Fifth Summit of the Americas to say a few words to an audience as distinguished as this and I promise you I will not be as lengthy as some were today in the Plenary Session.

Many of you are visiting Trinidad and Tobago for the first time and I am sure you would like to know a little about the country that is your host. My dear friends let me begin with a story; the history of Trinidad and Tobago began with the Caribs and Arawaks, the indigenous peoples. But our recorded history began in the year 1498 when Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, that history states that before sailing, he went to a church in Spain, got on his knees and prayed to Almighty God. He promised Almighty God that the very first land he sighted he would name in honour of Him. This is the history of Trinidad and Tobago my dear friends. He set sail and after a while he hit a belt five degrees north and five degrees south of the equator called the Doldrums where there is no wind, his ships would be calm, they began to run out of food and water and the crew threatened mutiny. In those circumstances Christopher Columbus got on his knees again and reaffirmed the commitment that he had made, and he promised Almighty God that if he got them out of this then he would name the first land he saw after Him.

Almost miraculously after 7 days in the Doldrums the winds picked up and shortly thereafter they saw on the horizons three peaks, he sailed towards those 3 peaks and he landed on the bay. Christopher Columbus came out of the ship and went onto the shore, he knelt on the shore, planted a cross there and he named the island Isla de la Trinite, it is today known as the island of Trinidad. Ladies and gentlemen the island of Trinidad, the country of Trinidad and Tobago is the only country that I know that has been named in honour of Almighty God. That is the recorded history however legend has it that after 500 years great prosperity will devolve on Trinidad and Tobago. I am in no position to say whether there is any substance to that legend or not but let us review some of facts.

Trinidad and Tobago is an oil and gas producer, in oil 115,000 barrels a day, insignificant, in terms of gas our production today is about 4.2 billion cubic feet per day, the oil equivalent of which is just over 700,000 barrels per day. Our reserves are very small in relation to countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia and Venezuela; we have just 34 trillion cubic feet; that is the total reserve of Trinidad and Tobago, in Russia it is over 900 trillion cubic feet, large numbers. But my dear friends we have been able to do a lot with little and what we call the Trinidad and Tobago magic is precisely that, that with the very little reserves that we have we have been able to do quite a bit.

Trinidad and Tobago today owns 10 ammonia plants, all of them world scale, 7 world scale methanol plants and up to 2007 was the largest exporter of ammonia in the world and the largest exporter of methanol. The largest market is the United States and we counted in that year (2007) for 75% of the US market in methanol and about 55% of the US market in ammonia. And more than that today we produce liquefied natural gas there are four trains producing a total of about 2.4 billion cubic feet per day 70% of which goes to the US. Recently I was in Boston talking to some students. The day was a little cold and I told them that I generally cannot tolerate the cold but in the United States I will not quarrel over cold especially in a place like Boston where on a cold day, 70% of the gas that is used to heat homes comes from Trinidad and Tobago.

My dear friends we are a significant producer of iron and steel and directly reduced iron. This year in fact construction is about to begin on our first aluminium smelter and the introduction of a new industry and all that goes with the possibilities associated with downstream, out of the availability domestically of the primary product, aluminium. And at the same time because it is energy intensive we are about to begin production on the largest PowerStation ever to be constructed in this country with a capacity of about 720 mega watts. It is a large PowerStation. That is not the end of it, we expect that the investment decision will be taken, it’s virtually taken already but construction should begin early next year on a plant to produce a propylene and polypropylene, the basic building block of plastics. In due course as we get the critical mass of ethane, we will go the route of ethylene and polyethylene and begin to build the plastics industry, to which we aspire not just for Trinidad and Tobago incidentally, but there are great possibilities for the CARICOM region and especially the OECS countries. If there is the availability in Trinidad and Tobago of a product like polypropylene it can be used to manufacture plastics in the region.

We have done a lot with little and there are many other plans on the drawing board and one of the reasons why we have raised the question of a new Partial Scope agreement with the United States of America, is because there are a number of investors who are anxious to invest in downstream industries based on the domestic availability of primary products, but who are not prepared to take that step unless they are guaranteed a certain access to the US market and under acceptable terms and conditions, that is what is on the table. We are a government with a large social conscious and therefore in the social sector we have spent a lot of time, effort and money. Incidentally I have just given you a synopsis of the energy sector, I could go into much greater detail because there is a lot more construction associated with that which need not detain us at this time, suffice it to say that it is our largest industry and an industry that continues to contribute significantly to the social and economic development of our country.

In terms of the social sector we have done a lot of expenditure, in the field of education we now have universal primary education; universal secondary education and both are free. Tertiary education my dear friends is now free and we announced in the last budget that all citizens of Trinidad and Tobago who gained a first class honours degree in any recognised university will be guaranteed funding from the government of Trinidad and Tobago to do a PhD. Our scholarship programme is very heavy in education and last year I think about 240 graduates came back from government scholarships and this year the figure is expected to be something like 420, large numbers, we are about to have a major transformation. In fact my dear friends, when we came back to office in 2001 the percentage of graduates from the secondary school sector who accessed tertiary education amounted to about 10%. Today that figure stands at 42% and we target 60% by the year 2015. In the area of early childhood care and education we proposed to have universal early childhood care and education by about the year 2012/2013, we have a school feeding programme in place and we have a lot of the adjuncts to the education system that will ensure that those students in our country who wish to participate in that system, and it is compulsory at certain levels, are able to do so and to maximise the benefits that they are available.

We ladies and gentlemen are a country of great diversity, about 42% of our population are of East Indian descent, about 38% of African descent and of the remaining 20% we have about 2% Chinese, White, Syrian, Lebanese and the other 18% is mixed, and the mixed group is the largest growing group. But the mixtures have all kinds of consequences one of which is very beautiful women. I remembered addressing a group of business men in Hong Kong in 1995 and I told them that in 1977 our entrant to the Miss Universe competition came first, Ms. Penny Commisiong, Miss Universe 1977. Our entrant to the Miss World competition in 1985 was the winner and in recent competitions we are second, third, fourth, fifth we are always somewhere there. I would not be surprised as I told them that if relatively soon we would win another of these competition, in 1998 we won Miss Universe for a second time. This my dear friends is a small country of 1.3 million people.

In 1976 we produced the fastest man in the world, the 100 metres record holder in the Olympics Hasely Crawford, and we have produced a number of other leading sportsmen not the least of which is the indomitable Brian Lara who scored 375 runs in cricket, that record was subsequently broken and he broke it again and he went to 400 runs. And shortly after the first 375, he scored 501 runs in County cricket in the United Kingdom. In the recent Olympic Games we had to humble ourselves in favour of our Jamaican counterpart, Usain Bolt and I have to say that it is the first time I ever saw anyone run and smoke come of their heels, it was Usain Bolt of Jamaica but we came second ladies and gentlemen. In sport we have done reasonably well.

In terms of poverty, the level of poverty existing in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 stood at 35%, the level of poverty in the year 2005 fell to 16.7%. Our economy grew at the rate of 8.3% on average between the years 2001 and 2008, it is a high rate of growth and it is a rate of growth that has gone down this year but we have no doubt that when the economic circumstances of the world change that the economic circumstances of Trinidad and Tobago will change even further. We have a sovereign wealth fund, its small by other standards; right now it has in it just about 2.2 billion US dollars. We do not rank with Saudi Arabia, it is a modest sum but one of which we are very proud and that has given us a very high credit rating in the international rating agencies, Trinidad and Tobago therefore is a good country in which to invest.

My dear friends, having said that I think I should also say that there is only one country in the western hemisphere that has had more foreign direct investment than us and that country is Canada. We have had over the last 5 or 6 years foreign direct investment of the order of 600 million US dollars. Our unemployment when I became Prime Minister for the first time in 1991 stood at 20.3% in that quarter; in the second quarter of last year unemployment in this country fell to 4.5%, full employment.

And if today my dear friends we are able to host the Fifth Summit of the Americas it’s not that we built this hotel to host the Summit, it is because this hotel was built that we could host the Summit, and the hotel preceded the decision on the Summit and later this year, we will be hosting the 54 nation Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

My dear friends Trinidad and Tobago has done quite well and we are optimistic enough to set ourselves the goal of developed country status by the year 2020. All of that has come largely because of our position in oil and natural gas. I remember in the year 1999, I was invited to a ceremony in Point Fortin where we were initiating the exportation of gas in the form of LNG from Trinidad and Tobago for the first time. And after the ceremony was over I thought I would check because I remembered the origins of this country in the recorded history, it was Christopher Columbus who had discovered us, in recorded history, coming as he did from Spain and naming the country in honour of the Almighty God, in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. I decided to check where that cargo was headed, it was not the first cargo it was one of the first ten cargos and when I checked my dear friends you would not believe what the destination of that cargo was; you are right the country was Spain.

God Bless you all.