CDB’s director: Trinidad & Tobago must diversify

(Trinidad Guardian) Di­rec­tor of Eco­nom­ics at the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank Dr Justin Ram says T&T must fo­cus on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ways to boost the oth­er sec­tors in the econ­o­my such as tourism, agri­cul­ture, and the cre­ative in­dus­tries.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing a break in the Vy­bz­ing Out­reach Pro­gramme for youths that was host­ed by the CDB in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment at the Hy­att Re­gency, in Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day, where Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe gave the open­ing re­marks, T&T-born Ram said “T&T has a re­al­ly good foun­da­tion to build on. Com­ing off the back of the oil and gas wealth, T&T has built a very good in­fra­struc­ture be­cause of the cheap gas and elec­tric­i­ty it has which is very good if you want to com­pete glob­al­ly.

“But the coun­try is now at a time when it re­al­ly must fo­cus on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, that does not say that oil and gas wouldn’t be im­por­tant, but the em­pha­sis must now be on how to boost the oth­er sec­tors in the econ­o­my.

He said there are a num­ber of sec­tors that hold great po­ten­tial for T&T, one of them is tourism. “T&T has tra­di­tion­al­ly not fo­cused on that, tourism can ac­tu­al­ly pro­vide you with a plat­form that can spur growth in oth­er sec­tors as well, name­ly agri­cul­ture and per­haps al­so the cre­ative in­dus­tries.”

He ex­plained if T&T had a blos­som­ing and grow­ing tourism sec­tor that was util­is­ing agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, it will spur growth for farm­ers to pro­duce now for this sort of in­nate ex­port sec­tor with­in the coun­try.

Ram said T&T was one of the most cre­ative places in the world, its Car­ni­val and mu­sic were world-renowned, and was an area the coun­try need­ed to con­sid­er how to cap­i­talise on and ex­port.

He said the num­ber one fac­tor in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for small open economies like T&T was the earn­ing of for­eign ex­change, ei­ther the earn­ing of forex or to have do­mes­tic sup­plies that can sub­sti­tute for im­port­ed.

Ram said the net ben­e­fit was for­eign ex­change earn­ings. This was not dif­fi­cult, how­ev­er, he said. What pol­i­cy-mak­ers need­ed to fo­cus on was im­prov­ing the do­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in the coun­try; to make it easy for an en­tre­pre­neur to con­duct busi­ness.

He said in­or­di­nate lengths of time for peo­ple to con­duct trans­ac­tions with Gov­ern­ment, peo­ple lin­ing up for hours were a drain on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, it was now time for T&T to move to­ward digi­ti­sa­tion and E-gov­ern­ment (elec­tron­ic gov­ern­ment).

Ram said a Malaysian col­league re­lat­ed to him that he was able to get his pass­port in one hour, this was what the coun­try was com­pet­ing with.

He said if peo­ple can go to coun­tries that were so easy to fa­cil­i­tate trans­ac­tions, those coun­tries will at­tract in­vest­ment both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and for­eign.

Ram said the CDB had been en­cour­ag­ing re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to im­ple­ment fis­cal rules that gov­ern­ments must op­er­ate with­in a leg­isla­tive frame­work that brought their coun­try’s re­spec­tive bud­gets to a lev­el that was sus­tain­able over time.

‘T&T needs mi­grants’

When asked about the newest wave of mi­grants to T&T—Venezue­lans—what im­pact can they have on the coun­try, he replied that from an eco­nom­ic point of view T&T need­ed mi­grants and mi­gra­tion.

He said it was pro­ject­ed for T&T that from 2015 to 2100 the pop­u­la­tion de­cline would reach about 28 per cent.

Ram said if it con­tin­ued there will be few­er peo­ple in so­ci­ety who will have to bear the brunt of pay­ing pen­sions.

He said, how­ev­er, the coun­try had to en­sure that mi­gra­tion was man­aged well with re­spect to reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants by the T&T gov­ern­ment. He said this was a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Ram said most peo­ple who came in­to the coun­try as refugees just want to work and they can con­tribute so much to the econ­o­my which was ben­e­fi­cial to T&T both eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly.

He said so­lu­tions and strate­gies to dri­ve eco­nom­ic and so­cial trans­for­ma­tion in the Caribbean will fea­ture promi­nent­ly when the CDB holds its 49th An­nu­al Meet­ing of its Board of Gov­er­nors on June 5 and 6, at the Hy­att.

Ram said the over­all theme this year was on trans­for­ma­tion.

CDB pres­i­dent, Dr War­ren Smith, will be giv­ing his state­ment to the gov­er­nors at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the board of gov­er­nors Hy­att Re­gency on June 5.

He said Smith will give his vi­sion as to where the bank has come from over the years and what do Caribbean coun­tries need to do in or­der to trans­form and be­come de­vel­oped na­tions with­in a time frame.