Richard Ra­moutar

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment must be com­mend­ed in its en­deav­ours to at­tract, ex­pand, pro­mote, en­hance and en­cour­age for­eign in­vestors to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Re­cent state­ments by the En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Sen­a­tor Kevin Ram­nar­ine at­test­ing to agree­ments signed by the Russ­ian Iron and Steel com­pa­ny and the Sau­di Ara­bi­an Oil Com­pa­ny may even­tu­al­ly prove to be as­tute busi­ness de­ci­sions to aid in the grad­ual stim­u­la­tion of the econ­o­my, in­crease for­eign re­la­tions, de­vel­op ad­di­tion­al tech­ni­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal ex­per­tise, forge new mar­kets, cre­ate jobs in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, as well as per­ma­nent ones, once the projects are com­plet­ed.

The Min­istries of Trade, Labour, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and For­eign Af­fairs are all in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to these for­eign in­vest­ments as well as busi­ness de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes. These busi­ness ini­tia­tives may well ad­vance our do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ests. Not on­ly will po­ten­tial for­eign in­vestors find a mi­ni-Unit­ed Na­tions of hos­pitable peo­ple in T&T, but al­so a very well ed­u­cat­ed, high­ly lit­er­ate and skilled, tech­ni­cal and pro­fes­sion­al hu­man re­source base.

Rus­sians and Saud­is are com­ing

Though the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment via its em­bassy in Port-of-Spain is­sued a state­ment reg­is­ter­ing its dis­ap­proval over the pro­ce­dures utilised through which the Sau­di firm was grant­ed the con­tract, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GOTT) ought to be gen­tly re­mind­ed of the fact that de­spite our sov­er­eign­ty, the glob­alised vil­lage in which we live to­day has be­come more de­pen­dent on each oth­er. Whilst there will be ini­tial hur­dles and oth­er com­plex bu­reau­crat­ic chal­lenges, lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, labour prac­tices to adapt and ad­just to, the more press­ing ques­tion is, what are the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits to be de­rived for the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go?

How­ev­er, the sig­nif­i­cance of the US as one of the most pow­er­ful de­ci­sion mak­ers in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na, es­pe­cial­ly the Caribbean Basin, must not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed where their eco­nom­ic, geo-strate­gic and se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests are con­cerned. Where­as we are free to con­duct our for­eign pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives, one must be par­tic­u­lar­ly pru­dent in deal­ing with the US. There are too many spheres of cu­mu­la­tive in­flu­ence that the US can adopt that may af­fect our na­tion and its cit­i­zen­ry.

In this in­vest­ment thrust, one of the key fac­tors aris­ing in this en­deav­our is fa­cil­i­ta­tion. Are we pre­pared to fa­cil­i­tate and not frus­trate the im­mi­gra­tion as­pect of busi­ness? What type of changes will be re­quired at these mis­sions? Are there po­ten­tial chal­lenges and risk fac­tors that can run counter to the pub­lic in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go? Do we have ad­e­quate and ca­pa­ble hu­man re­sources to deal with the Rus­sians and Saud­is? Can we pro­fes­sion­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate on a busi­ness lev­el? Have we done ad­e­quate re­search and ac­quired pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice on deal­ing with the Rus­sians and Saud­is on a le­gal ba­sis?

Trad­ing re­la­tions with dif­fer­ent na­tions

As the na­tion seeks to forge ad­di­tion­al busi­ness in­vest­ments and trad­ing re­la­tions with dif­fer­ent na­tions, it is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly clear that these in­tend­ed in­vest­ments and busi­ness de­vel­op­ments should be draft­ed in­to a mean­ing­ful and ef­fec­tive pol­i­cy there­by link­ing the im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment more con­cert­ed­ly in­to the fab­ric for­eign pol­i­cy.

In this way, the im­mi­gra­tion com­po­nent of our for­eign mis­sions can play a much more fa­cil­i­ta­tive and pro­mot­ing role in sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a vi­brant and sta­ble econ­o­my, where­by mi­gra­tion in­vest­ments can be spread even­ly across T&T.

Thus, ac­cord­ing to Vol­ume 1, Sec­tion D1.1.1 (1) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Im­mi­gra­tion Man­u­al, one of the stat­ed ob­jec­tives of im­mi­gra­tion is to "con­tribute to eco­nom­ic growth and sta­bil­i­ty through en­hanc­ing the over­all de­vel­op­ment of hu­man ca­pa­bil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go and (11) en­cour­age en­ter­prise and in­no­va­tion." How­ev­er, it might be added that the Busi­ness Im­mi­gra­tion Pro­gramme ob­jec­tives must be clear­ly out­lined in the Im­mi­gra­tion Man­u­al, and which should al­so in­clude that "this pro­gramme seeks to pro­mote eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and em­ploy­ment by at­tract­ing peo­ple with ven­ture cap­i­tal, busi­ness acu­men and in­vest­ment, en­tre­pre­neur­ial and self-em­ployed skills. This pro­gramme should al­so at­tempt to de­vel­op new com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties and to im­prove ac­cess to grow­ing for­eign mar­kets and their spe­cial re­quire­ments and cus­toms."

Since our Im­mi­gra­tion Act is pat­terned af­ter the 1952 Cana­di­an Im­mi­gra­tion Act with some re­vised changes over the years, would it not be pru­dent to de­vel­op a writ­ten busi­ness im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, in­cor­po­rate it in­to the Im­mi­gra­tion Act with clear and in­struc­tion­al guide­lines for prospec­tive in­vestors, en­tre­pre­neurs and self-em­ployed peo­ple wish­ing to con­duct busi­ness and re­side in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In each case there will be an out­lined de­f­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes an in­vestor, the amount of cap­i­tal re­quired, the na­ture and fea­si­bil­i­ty of the in­vest­ment, the lo­ca­tion, the type of in­dus­try. In this way, the con­sular, eco­nom­ic and com­mer­cial units of our em­bassies and high com­mis­sions can al­so in­te­grate their for­eign pol­i­cy im­per­a­tives in a co­he­sive man­ner.

Cen­tral and South Amer­i­can ini­tia­tives

Dur­ing the em­bry­on­ic stages of the PP Gov­ern­ment, of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tions made trips to the US, UK, Aus­tralia and Brazil. It would be a sound mea­sure of pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty to demon­strate to the pub­lic some of the fruit­ful re­sults of these trade and in­vest­ment trips by now.

We do busi­ness with Colom­bia, but do we have a Colom­bian mis­sion? How has Gov­ern­ment dealt with the is­sues of hu­man traf­fick­ing, slav­ery and pros­ti­tu­tion from Colom­bia? Why are there fe­male Colom­bian teenagers and young women al­leged­ly still work­ing in rur­al ar­eas in bars across this coun­try il­le­gal­ly? Are some of them brought in al­leged­ly to "per­form spe­cial ser­vices" un­der the busi­ness class cat­e­gories?