NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Economy of Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago experienced a real growth rate of 3.2% in 2002. This made 9 straight years of real growth after 8 years of economic decline. The government of Prime Minister Patrick Manning has continued the sound macroeconomic policies of the previous regime, and is trying to further improve the investment climate. Long-term growth looks promising, as Trinidad and Tobago further develops its hydrocarbon, petrochemical, and metals sectors--with significant increases in exports--and continues its diversification efforts in services, tourism, manufacturing, and agriculture. U.S. Economic Calendar Economics at the Open Directory Project Economics textbooks on Wikibooks The Economists Economics A-Z Institutions and organizations Bureau of Labor Statistics - from the American Labor Department Center for Economic and Policy Research (USA) National Bureau of Economic Research (USA) - Economics material from the organization... A prime minister may be either: chief or leading member of the cabinet of the top-level government in a country having a parliamentary system of government; or the official, in countries with a semi-presidential system of government, appointed to manage the civil service and execute the directives of... Patrick Manning Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning (born August 17, 1946) is the current Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Trinidad and Tobago and Political Leader of the Peoples National Movement (PNM). ... Macroeconomics is the economics sub-field of study that considers aggregate behavior, i. ... // Definition Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in finance and economics. ... // Definition In chemistry, a hydrocarbon is any chemical compound that consists only of the elements carbon (C) and hydrogen (H). ... A petrochemical is any chemical derived from fossil fuels. ... Hot metal work from a blacksmith In chemistry, a metal (Greek: Metallon) is an element that readily forms ions (cations) and has metallic bonds, and metals are sometimes described as a lattice of positive ions (cations) in a cloud of electrons. ... A tourist boat travels the River Seine in Paris, France Beaches make popular tourist resorts. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Trinidad and Tobago's strong growth rate over the past few years has led to trade surpluses over the past 4 years, even with high import levels due to industrial expansion and increased consumer demand. The debt service ratio has fallen from 15.4% in 1997 to 4.4% in 2002. Unemployment continues to drop slowly, from 12.1% in 2001 to 10.4% in 2002. A fruit stand at a market. ... Debt is that which is owed. ... Dorothea Langes Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California during the Great Depression. ...

The petrochemical sector, including methanol, ammonia, urea, and liquefied natural gas, has continued to grow and has experienced a new burst of activity with the resumption of fullscale production of all existing facilities. Natural gas production continues to expand and should meet the needs of the many industrial plants coming on stream in the next 3 years. The major development in 2003 was the completion of Train III at the Atlantic LNG plant. A fourth train is currently under construction. Trinidad and Tobago is the 5th largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world. The expansion of Atlantic LNG over the next 4 years could create the largest-single sustained phase of economic growth in Trinidad and Tobago. It has become the leading exporter of LNG to the United States, and now supplies some 65% of U.S. LNG imports. Trinidad and Tobago is experiencing a transition from an oil-based economy to a natural gas based economy. In 2002, production of natural gas averaged 1,826 million ft³ (52 million m³) per day representing an increase of 14.4% over output in 2001. Atlantic LNG consumes 47% of total natural gas production. As a whole the energy sector set a record growth rate of 9.5% in 2003. In 2002 the petrochemical sector accounted for 20.2% of central government revenue. The first major petroleum find in thirty years, by BHP Billiton in 2002 has revived production which had been falling since the 1970s. Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol, is a chemical compound with chemical formula CH3OH. It is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colourless, flammable, poisonous liquid that is used as an antifreeze, solvent, fuel, and as a denaturant for ethyl alcohol. ... Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3. ... Urea is an organic compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, with the formula CON2H4 or (NH2)2CO. Urea is also known as carbamide, especially in the recommended International Non-proprietary Names (rINN) in use in Europe. ... Liquefied natural gas or LNG is natural gas that has been processed to remove impurities and heavy hydrocarbons and then condensed into a liquid at atmospheric pressure by cooling it to approximately -160 degrees Celsius, and stored in specially designed tanks. ... Nodding donkey pumping an oil well near Sarnia, Ontario, 2001 Petroleum (from Greek petr â€“ rock and oleum â€“ oil), crude oil, sometimes colloquially called black gold, is a thick, dark brown or greenish liquid. ... BHP Billiton is the worlds largest mining company. ...

In 2002, methanol production reached 2,828.9 thousand tons, an increase of 1.4% from the previous year. Exports at 2,782.4 thousand tons were marginally lower than in the previous year. Work continued on the two largescale methanol plants at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate during 2002. The first of these, the Atlas methanol facility, is slated to come on stream by the first quarter of 2004. The process design on the second plant, the M5000, was completed during the year. The M5000, 1.8 million tons per annum plant will be considered the world's largest of its kind and should be commissioned by early 2005.

Of the nonhydrocarbon sectors, distribution, construction, transport, communications, and manufacturing all show signs of continued growth. Agriculture, however, has been experiencing stagnant growth rates. Cranes are essential in large construction projects, such as this skyscraper Construction on the North Bytown Bridge in Ottawa, Canada. ... The term communications is used in a number of disciplines: Communications, also known as communication studies is the academic discipline which studies communication. ...

U.S. investment in Trinidad and Tobago exceeds one and one-quarter billion dollars. The U.S. investment average over the last 4 years was U.S.$300 million per year.

The government's economic strategy is based on fiscal and monetary discipline, private sector investment, and export-led growth.

The exchange rate in late 2004 was about $6.29=U.S.$1.00. The stability of the currency against the U.S. dollar has been maintained by the government's tight monetary policy. The dollar (represented by the dollar sign: $) is the name of the official currency in several countries, dependencies and other regions. ...

Reductions in subsidies to state enterprises have contributed to fiscal soundness and lent credibility to the government's ongoing divestment program. Companies all or partially divested since 1987 include the National Fisheries Company, BWIA West Indies Airways, National Flour Mills (NFM), the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission, TT Methanol Company, Trinidad Cement, the Iron and Steel Company of Trinidad and Tobago (ISCOTT), and the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA). In May 1997, the government sold its remaining 69% interest in the Trinidad and Tobago Methanol Company to a consortium consisting of the local firm CL Financial and Germany's Ferrostaal and Helm. NFM was divested by an additional 14% in 1997, bringing the government's holding down to 51%. The government is currently considering creating a holding company to bring its remaining shares in several formerly wholly government-owned enterprises to market. In economics, a subsidy is generally a monetary grant given by government to lower the price faced by producers or consumers of a good, generally because it is considered to be in the public interest. ... In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset, for either financial or social goals. ... A lobster boat unloading its catch in Ilfracombe harbour, North Devon, England A fishery (plural: fisheries) is an organized effort by humans to catch fish or other aquatic species, an activity known as fishing. ... BWIA Airbus A340 BWIA West Indies Airways (IATA: BW, ICAO: BWA, and Callsign: West Indian), called B-wee by locals, is the national airline of Trinidad and Tobago. ... Look up flour on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Electricity is a general term applied to phenomena involving a fundamental property of matter called an electric charge. ... In the general sense, a cement (Latin caementum) is any material with adhesive properties. ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 8, 4, d Appearance lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge Atomic mass 55. ... The old steel cable of a colliery winding tower Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. ... Water (from the Old English word wÃ¦ter; c. ... The word sewerage means the provision of pipes etc to collect and dispose of sewage. ... A holding company is a company that owns enough voting stock in another firm to control management and operations by influencing or electing its board of directors. ... See stock (disambiguation) for other meanings of the term stock A stock, also referred to as a share, is commonly a share of ownership in a corporation. ...

Trinidad and Tobago's infrastructure is adequate by regional standards. The national airport has recently been expanded. There is an extensive network of paved roads, and utilities are fairly reliable in the cities. Some areas, however, especially rural districts, still suffer from water shortages, power failures, and inadequate drainage. Some companies presently constructing large industrial plants at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate in central Trinidad are concerned that water supply to their plants will not be adequate. The government is addressing this problem with the construction of a desalinization plant. Infrastructure improvement, especially rural roads and bridges, rural electrification and telephone service, and drainage and sewerage, are among the government's budget priorities, and are generously supported by the multilateral development agencies and the European Union. Transport or transportation is the movement of people, goods, signals and information from one place to another. ... A typical rural county road in Indiana, USA, where traffic drives on the right. ... A public utility is a company that maintains the infrastructure for a public service. ... A city is an urban area, differentiated from a town, village, or hamlet by size, population density, importance, or legal status. ... Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given area. ... Desalination refers to any of several processes that removes the excess salt and minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or for irrigation, sometimes producing table salt as a byproduct. ... A log bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a gorge, valley, road, railroad track, river, body of water, or any other physical obstacle. ... Electrification refers to changing a thing or system to operate using electricity. ... Telephone This article is about telephone technology. ... Budget generally refers to a list of all planned expenses and revenues. ...

Telephone service is relatively modern and reliable, although higher priced than comparable U.S. service, since the government is contractually bound to the monopoly supplier TSTT (Telecommunication Services of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd., a joint venture between the State and Cable & Wireless (United Kingdom). Cellular service is widespread and has been the major area of growth for several years. Digicel and Laqtel were granted cellular licenses in 2005, breaking TSTT's monopoly. The Internet has come into widespread use, although service can be slow at peak times. The government has been slow to open up this market to competition as well. In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. ... TSTT - Telecommunication Services Of Trinidad & Tobago TSTT Is Currently The Largest Telephone & Internet Provider In Trinidad & Tobago Homepage: http://tstt. ... Cable and Wireless (NYSE: CWP) (LSE: CW.) is a British telecommunications company. ... Cellular redirects here. ... Digicel is the leading mobile phone network in the Caribbean. ... Laqtel, Ltd. ... 2005 (MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Competition is the act of striving against another force for the purpose of achieving dominance or attaining a reward or goal, or out of a biological imperative such as survival. ...

GDP: purchasing power parity - $9.41 billion (1999 est.) In economics, purchasing power parity (PPP) is a number used to compare the standard of living of two countries. ...

GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 2%
industry: 44%
services: 54% (1998 est.)

Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: NA%
highest 10%: NA%

Labor force - by occupation: construction and utilities 12.4%, manufacturing, mining, and quarrying 14%, agriculture 9.5%, services 64.1% (1997 est.) The El Chino Mine located near Silver City, New Mexico is an open-pit copper mine Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually (but not always) from an ore body, vein, or (coal) seam. ... A small cinder quarry A dimension stone quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. ...

Unemployment rate: 14.2% (1998) Dorothea Langes Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California during the Great Depression. ...

Budget:
revenues: $1.54 billion
expenditures: $1.6 billion, including capital expenditures of $117.3 million (1998)

Industries: petroleum, chemicals, tourism, food processing, cement, beverages, cotton textiles A chemical substance is any material substance used in or obtained by a process in chemistry: A chemical compound is a substance consisting of two or more chemical elements that are chemically combined in fixed proportions. ... In the general sense, a cement (Latin caementum) is any material with adhesive properties. ... The word drink is primarily a verb, meaning to ingest liquids, see Drinking. ... Cotton is a soft fiber that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant, a shrub native to the tropical and subtropical regions of both the Old World and the New World. ... This article is about the type of fabric. ...

Electricity - production by source:
fossil fuel: 99.27%
hydro: 0%
nuclear: 0%
other: 0.73% (1998) Coal rail cars in Ashtabula, Ohio Fossil fuels, also known as mineral fuels, are hydrocarbon-containing natural resources such as coal, petroleum and natural gas. ... Hydroelectricity is a form of hydropower used to produce electricity. ... This article is about power derived from nuclear reactions. ...

Agriculture - products: cocoa, sugarcane, rice, citrus, coffee, vegetables; poultry Cocoa is the dried and partially fermented fatty seed of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. ... Species Saccharum arundinaceum Saccharum bengalense Saccharum edule Saccharum officinarum Saccharum procerum Saccharum ravennae Saccharum robustum Saccharum sinense Saccharum spontaneum Sugar cane Saccharum officinarum at Kew Gardens, London Sugarcane or Sugar cane (Saccharum) is a genus of between 6â€“37 species (depending on taxonomic interpretation) of tall grasses (family Poaceae, tribe... Binomial name Oryza sativa L. Rice (Oryza sativa) is a species of grass in the genus Oryza, native to tropical and subtropical southeastern Asia, where it grows in wetlands. ... Species & major hybrids Species Citrus maxima - Pomelo Citrus medica - Citron Citrus reticulata - Mandarin & Tangerine Major hybrids Citrus x aurantifolia - Key lime Citrus x aurantium Citrus x hystrix - Kaffir Lime Citrus x ichangensis - Ichang Lemon Citrus x limetta Citrus x limon - Lemon Citrus x limonia - Rangpur Citrus x paradisi - Grapefruit Citrus... Coffee beans and a cup of coffee Coffee is a beverage, usually served hot, prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. ... Vegetables in a market Vegetable is a nutritional and culinary term denoting any part of a plant that is commonly consumed by humans as food, but is not regarded as a culinary grain, fruit, nut, herb, or spice. ... Duck amongst other poultry The Poultry-dealer, after Cesare Vecellio. ...

Exports - commodities: petroleum and petroleum products, chemicals, steel products, fertilizer, sugar, cocoa, coffee, citrus, flowers Nodding donkey pumping an oil well near Sarnia, Ontario, 2001 Petroleum (from Greek petr â€“ rock and oleum â€“ oil), crude oil, sometimes colloquially called black gold, is a thick, dark brown or greenish liquid. ... The old steel cable of a colliery winding tower Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. ... In general use, sugar is taken to mean sucrose, also called table sugar or saccharose, a disaccharide which is a white crystalline solid. ... Cocoa is the dried and partially fermented fatty seed of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. ... Coffee beans and a cup of coffee Coffee is a beverage, usually served hot, prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. ... Species & major hybrids Species Citrus maxima - Pomelo Citrus medica - Citron Citrus reticulata - Mandarin & Tangerine Major hybrids Citrus x aurantifolia - Key lime Citrus x aurantium Citrus x hystrix - Kaffir Lime Citrus x ichangensis - Ichang Lemon Citrus x limetta Citrus x limon - Lemon Citrus x limonia - Rangpur Citrus x paradisi - Grapefruit Citrus... Wildflowers A flower is the reproductive structure of those plants classified as angiosperms (flowering plants; Division Magnoliophyta). ...

Exports - partners: United States 36.9%, Caricom countries 29.4%, Central and South America 9.7%, European Union 6.3% (1998) The Caribbean Community and Common Market or CARICOM was established by the Treaty of Chaguaramas which came into effect on August 1, 1973. ...

Imports - commodities: machinery, transport equipment, manufactured goods, food, live animals The word commodity is a term with distinct meanings in business and in Marxian political economy. ... Phyla Porifera (sponges) Ctenophora (comb jellies) Cnidaria Placozoa Subregnum Bilateria Acoelomorpha Orthonectida Rhombozoa Myxozoa Superphylum Deuterostomia Chordata (vertebrates, etc. ...

Currency: 1 Trinidad and Tobago dollar (TT$) = 100 cents The dollar (ISO 4217 code: TTD; also TT$) is the currency of Trinidad and Tobago. ...

Exchange rates: Trinidad and Tobago dollars (TT$) per US$1 - 6.2697 (January 2000), 6.2963 (1999), 6.2983 (1998), 6.2517 (1997), 6.0051 (1996), 5.9478 (1995)

Categories: WTO members | Economies by country | Trinidad and Tobago This is a copyrighted and/or trademarked logo. ... WTO Logo The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization which oversees a large number of agreements defining the rules of trade between its member states (WTO, 2004a). ... The Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998, coupled with fluctuations in the price of oil have created uncertainty and instability in Bruneis economy. ... The European Union has the largest economy in the world, ahead of that of the United States of America with a 2005 GDP of 12,865,602 vs. ... Economy - overview: Guinea-Bissau is among the worlds least developed nations and one of the 20 poorest countries in the world, and depends mainly on agriculture and fishing. ... The economy of Hong Kong has often been cited by people such as Milton Friedman and the Cato Institute as an example of the benefits of laissez-faire capitalism. ... The economy of Macau is based largely on tourism (including gambling) and textile and fireworks manufacturing. ... The St. ... Dr. Sun Yat-Sen decorates a 100NT bill. ...