Discuss Standard and Poor's rating of the government's economic performance.
- How can it help enhance the government's image in terms of managing Trinidad and Tobago's economy?
- Reflect on Julian Assange, the Wikileaks disclosures, and show a connection between these two issues.
Author: Sherrese Charles
Public Relations Student
In its Annual report, published on January 14th 2011, International Rating Agency Standard and Poor’s, gave Trinidad and Tobago an affirming ‘A’ in foreign currency and ‘A+’ in local currency long-term sovereign credit rating. At the same time, the country received an ‘A’ in short-term rating. The long-term rating AA transfer and convertibility assessment is unchanged. The rating of Standard and Poor’s upon Trinidad and Tobago would have many implications both positive and negative. One of the negative implications is that Trinidad and Tobago’s economy has become overly dependent on the energy sector.
The government needs to diversify the economy. For example, the expansion of the Cocoa Industry, planting of vegetables and other crops, and the exploring of other industries such as tourism and recycling. Current studies show that oil and natural gas resources could be depleted in ten to fifteen years. The government’s pursuit of attaining developed nation status may be thwarted with the progression of this developing economy, as more persons may not be satisfied with the current conditions. The crime level will surely increase with corruption and petty crimes. A positive implication is that the per capita income is high. Standard and Poor’s rating of Trinidad and Tobago will illustrate to the world that we are open to trade and foreign investors. In addition, more job opportunities in the energy sector and non-energy sector such as hotels, restaurants, manufacturing of food products, and construction sectors will become available.
Julian Assange is an Australian publisher/journalist/software developer and Internet activist. He is the founder, spokesperson and editor in chief of Wikileaks, a whistleblower website for worldwide news leaks, with the stated purpose of creating open governments. Toward the end of last year, Wikileaks exposed over 400 files on Trinidad and Tobago consisting of classified information, also concerning the US embassy diplomatic cables in Trinidad and Tobago. It is important to note that the Wikileaks website has brought to light many keys issues such as the SIA and more importantly the US has taken information from the Wikileaks site to gather secret information on Atlantic LNG.
Last year, United States Embassy officials were asked by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to conduct secret information-gathering on the facilities of Atlantic LNG because its loss would possibly have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States. According to a cable, classed as top secret, but published on the Wikileaks website this month, Clinton included Trinidad and Tobago’s natural gas facility on a series of world-wide infrastructure assets that needed to be placed on the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative (CFDI) list. Atlantic LNG, which the cable noted, provides 70 percent of US natural gas import needs.
