Trinidad & Tobago
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
These economies supply copper, fuels, bauxite, iron ore, uranium and other inputs required for the build-out.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Several parts of the economy could transmit AI’s effects. The pace depends on adoption by firms, connectivity and movement of workers between sectors.
This country is not covered by the Global Automation Atlas’s public country file; its task-level exposure work for other countries is at automationatlas.org.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Trinidad & Tobago starts
Trinidad & Tobago is a stalled-middle economy: middling income, middling scores, and growth that has been going backwards. Ten-year trend growth is -1.8% a year, as ageing gas fields cut output. At about $19,000 per person, it is among the region's richer economies, but the money comes from one source. Fuel is 28% of exports and petrochemicals most of the rest. Point Lisas turns gas into ammonia and methanol, and Atlantic LNG ships it abroad. Its clear strength is language: English inclusion scores 4.9, near the top, backed by an educated workforce and workable institutions. The constraints are physical. Compute and energy access scores just 1.1, physical build speed 1.6. The country has almost no data center capacity and a slow record of building anything new.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Trinidad's decline would continue: -1.8% growth a year, 156th of 157. Depleting gas and slow diversification set the pace. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would climb over two decades and reach 1.3% a year once AGI matures around 2045. That would rank the country 157th, last of all 157, because faster economies pull away while weak build and compute scores limit what Trinidad can capture. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 2.4% a year from the early 2030s, lifting the rank to 151st. Cheaper imported tools and services would help a little, but the country owns almost none of the machinery of an AI economy. None of these rates is high enough to double the economy within the horizon. Politics could slow or redirect any path. How Trinidadians and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost alike until about 2030, and the late 2020s add only fractions of a point to growth. So watch leading indicators, not GDP, and check them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world; a point or two above trend by the mid-2030s, a gradual one; a fade back to trend, a modest one. Trinidad's own tells would come first: new gas deals such as the cross-border Dragon field, Atlantic LNG train activity, petrochemical order books, and how fast government services move online.
If growth goes explosive
For Trinidad, explosive is the wrong word. Its rates stay modest even under Fast: 2.4% growth a year, while the frontier compounds at 39.2% and the regional median reaches 4.7%. The gap to both would widen, not close. This is relative decline dressed as mild recovery. The honest downside is people, not machines. Trinidad's workforce is English-speaking and mobile, with deep ties to the United States, Canada and Britain. If those economies boom while Trinidad stalls, the pull on skilled workers would strengthen, and the brain drain that already thins its talent pool could accelerate. Fast growth at home raises wages and eases that pressure; slow growth does the opposite. The hedge is to give skilled people reasons to stay, chiefly better-paid work in a diversifying economy. Even a mild lift would test the state: the energy ministry, the permitting bodies and the managers of the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund would have to steer diversification faster than they ever have.
What Trinidad & Tobago can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first is AI diffusion, at 2. Digital skills, deployment-permissive rules and online government carry weight even in the skeptic's world, so this is a no-regret move. It also builds on the country's real strength, its English-speaking workforce scoring 4.9, which should be protected as the leaders keep improving. The second no-regret lever is physical build speed, at 1.6. Statutory shot clocks on permits, pre-zoned industrial land and transmission built ahead of demand would help the economy under every scenario. The third lever is the bet. Compute and energy access, at 1.1, barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary, but under a fast takeoff it becomes the single biggest lever. Closing it means packaging power and land to attract data center investment. Trinidad can copy a working model from its own archetype: Brazil widened diffusion cheaply by digitizing public services through gov.br and the Pix payment system. A cautious government can act on the two no-regret levers today and lose nothing. Open the atlas's policy editor to see how moving these scores reshapes each path.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Trinidad & Tobago’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Trinidad & Tobago: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.