New growth areas to focus on

THE EDITOR: Open letter to the Prime Minister.

In our efforts to diversify the economy given the possible seven-year glass ceiling where the gas/oil sector is concerned, I think two areas of significant momentum are semiconductor chips and the mining of altcoins. There will be huge upsides in of these sectors.

Semiconductor chips: Your government can provide incentives to software/IT firms to set up their semiconductor chip facilities in TT. The major manufacturer in Taiwan is under a possible “war cloud” in light of China's military advancements and the president’s vow to realise “reunification” with Taiwan.

Additionally, the largest consumer of semiconductor chips is the US for use in electric vehicles and 5G cell phones – and all this before you even factor the metaverse estimated at $94 trillion.

Bitcoin/altcoin mining: One of TT's infrastructural strengths is its relative cheap cost of energy. This is the major cost factor in the mining of altcoins because you have to run huge super computers to keep solving the constant algorithmic problems to get new coins, which allow the blockchain to run.

This is the reason why the major altcoin miners left China and migrated to Texas, and this would apply similarly to us as well.

Taken together, these two sectors will definitely attract other synergistic opportunities and bolster our efforts to build a knowledge-based platform in TT. This would be a game changer and bootstrap us to Singapore-type international recognition, and a much larger disposable income per head of population.

ROGER GORDON

via e-mail