Trinidad & Tobago Country Statistics

LOCATION

Located 11 km (7 miles) off the north-eastern coast of Venezuela and at the most southern tip of the Caribbean archipelago, the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago is strategically positioned for trade with neighbouring islands as well as with North and South America.

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO ECONOMY

Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) has the largest economy in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its energy sector is the main driver of economic growth. With a history of oil production going back over 100 years, T&T’s oil output has been declining for several years, and in 2020 the country lost its status as the region’s major oil-producer with the commencement of oil production in Guyana. During the early 1990s increased production and utilisation of natural gas saw the energy sector evolve from being oil-dominant to a natural gas-dominant sector. While T&T has long been home to the Caribbean’s leading manufacturing sector, natural gas has spurred an even more impressive industrialisation thrust over the last four decades that made the country one of the hemisphere’s leading producers and exporters of liquified natural gas (LNG) and petrochemicals. Although natural gas production has fallen off from the highs of 2009 and 2010, there was a modest recovery in 2022. No substantial increase in gas output is expected before 2027.

Between 2000 and 2007, the domestic economy experienced healthy expansion with real GDP growth averaging around 8 percent. Although the nation weathered the 2008 financial crisis better than many other countries, from 2009 economic growth has been patchy and the government has been running on fiscal deficits for a decade, with the fiscal surplus in 2022 the first since 2011. Like virtually every other country, Trinidad and Tobago was impacted by the onset of the COVID- 19 Pandemic in 2020 and experienced an economic contraction of 9.1 percent that year. Following a further contraction of 1 percent in 2021, the country’s economy recovered, to grow by an estimated 1.5 percent in 2022.

After reaching a 10-year high of 5.7 percent in 2020, the average annual unemployment rate declined thereafter, as restrictions were rolled back and economic conditions improved. The unemployment rate averaged 4 percent in 2023. T&T’s performance on the Corruption Perception Index saw no improvement in 2023, as the score remained unchanged at 42 out of 100 (rank: 76 out of 180).

The T&T dollar is not pegged to the United States (US) dollar like those of other regional economies but operates under a managed float foreign exchange system in which the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT) intervenes in markets to prevent significant spikes in inflation and other economic volatilities. The system is managed in such a way that changes in the exchange rate are minimal. The average annual TT$/US$ exchange rate of 6.7811 in 2021, decreased to 6.7777 in 2022 before increasing slightly to 6.7789 in 2023. The dollar value of T&T’s foreign reserves generally sees moderate fluctuations with perhaps more decreases than increases. Similarly, the import cover that the reserves provide changes marginally, and stood at 6.7 months in April 2024.

T&T has close relationships with its fellow Caribbean states and has maintained healthy relations with countries in the Western hemisphere and across the world. In 2023, most of the country’s imports came from the Unites States, China, Brazil, Netherlands, UK and Canada. For the same period, the US, Belgium, the Netherlands, China and Guyana were the top five countries that T&T exported to.