ABSTRACT
Throughout the decade of the 1980s, the public policy environment in Trinidad and Tobago was marked by a steady decline in the economic fortunes of the country. During the period from 1982 to 1989, earnings in the petroleum sector, the mainstay of the economy, fell by close to 50 per cent and the government's revenue from the sector by 40 per cent. I The unemployment rate increased dramatically, from 10 per cent to 22 per cent, and in 1987 real GDP was some 28 per cent below the level of 1982. Overall, foreign-exchange earnings suffered a loss of around $2.8 billion during the same period.
