Last Wednes­day, I lis­tened to plans by the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism for growth to US$2 bil­lion in ex­ports from T&T by 2027, and $5 bil­lion by 2030. Very am­bi­tious! They al­so had tar­gets to dou­ble the cur­rent tourism growth from 6% and a tar­get for in­vest­ment that was sec­tor-spe­cif­ic for US$3b by 2027, with a hefty tar­get of $9b by 2030. It was a plan to get the non-en­er­gy sec­tor to fill the breach caused by low en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and forex short­ages due to re­duced en­er­gy rev­enue.

The Min­is­ter of Trade and his min­istry are on the right track. Ex­port growth and in­flow of more tourists would, of course, im­prove non-en­er­gy sec­tor forex earn­ings and ac­cel­er­ate di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. This strat­e­gy is fo­cused on what we have and can build up­on and do more with. It is fur­ther sup­port­ed by an in­vest­ment strat­e­gy fo­cused on new in­vest­ments in clear­ly iden­ti­fied sec­tors where growth is de­sir­able.

I liked many things about the event. First of all, it was busi­ness-like, with lit­tle or no par­ti­san pro­nounce­ments or provo­ca­tions. Both min­is­ters in the min­istry spoke well, as did pub­lic ser­vants, heads of in­sti­tu­tions and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of PSOTT, an um­brel­la body rep­re­sent­ing key pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions.

But there were things that caused me to be scep­ti­cal too. I sup­pose that is nor­mal with any pro­pos­al, and that is how things are thought through, re­fined and made more point­ed for ex­e­cu­tion. Be­cause ex­e­cu­tion is al­ways the chal­lenge; im­ple­men­ta­tion is where we al­ways fall short.

This Gov­ern­ment was more im­pres­sive than the last one in lay­ing out a co­her­ent ac­tion plan at the Hy­att. The Gov­ern­ment knows what needs to be done. But will they be able to sum­mon the will to im­ple­men­ta­tion of the vi­tal stake­hold­ers, so they can col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly fig­ure out how what needs to be done will ac­tu­al­ly get done with the re­quired speed and pre­ci­sion?

In oth­er words, how will good in­ten­tions and clear ob­jec­tives be ac­tu­alised and de­sired out­comes re­alised?

A lot of the fruits have to be de­liv­ered by the pri­vate sec­tor. That means the var­i­ous cham­bers and oth­er re­lat­ed in­sti­tu­tions buy­ing in and sup­port­ing with com­mit­ment; and in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­es for­mu­lat­ing and ac­tion­ing a plan for ex­port growth and in­creased forex earn­ings from ex­ist­ing and new mar­kets. And as econ­o­mist Arthur Lewis has taught us, every­thing be­gins with the mar­ket.

Be­yond the busi­ness de­ci­sions by in­di­vid­ual firms and the sup­port of cham­bers and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions, there is the whole Gov­ern­ment and State ap­pa­ra­tus stand­ing in the way. The Trade Min­istry, min­is­ters, pub­lic ser­vants and state in­sti­tu­tion lead­ers were very clear that gov­ern­ment min­istries, agen­cies and in­sti­tu­tions have to clear the way to fa­cil­i­tate pri­vate busi­ness­es in achiev­ing their goals, which in turn will help Gov­ern­ment achieve their ob­jec­tives, which ul­ti­mate­ly will cause the econ­o­my to grow, di­ver­si­fy, cre­ate jobs and stim­u­late the econ­o­my to buoy­an­cy.

The know-how and ca­pac­i­ty, and es­pe­cial­ly the co­or­di­na­tion and syn­er­gy re­quired to make it hap­pen, are what will make im­ple­men­ta­tion achiev­able. Ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion re­quires Gov­ern­ment to clear the ex­port and im­port high­way of bot­tle­necks and im­ped­i­ments to ef­fi­cien­cy to sup­port ef­fec­tive­ness and lo­gis­ti­cal pre­ci­sion. In­di­vid­ual firms need to be tech­no­log­i­cal­ly pro­fi­cient, com­pet­i­tive and in­no­v­a­tive to pro­vide world-class qual­i­ty goods and ser­vices. If we are able to achieve this lev­el of syn­er­gy in a pub­lic sec­tor/pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ship, we might be able to get some­where. It takes metic­u­lous work.

The min­istry has in­deed iden­ti­fied the ex­act fric­tion points that sup­press ex­port ve­loc­i­ty with so­lu­tions—Cus­toms and Ex­cise with stag­gered shifts, elim­i­na­tion of staff quo­tas, Op­er­a­tor Pro­gramme for Trust­ed Traders, and leg­is­lat­ing au­to­mat­ic waivers on port de­mur­rage fees. These would have to be ruth­less­ly ap­plied to un­lock trapped ca­pac­i­ty. His­tor­i­cal­ly, non-en­er­gy ex­ports have hov­ered in a band that makes a surge of US$2b ex­ports in two years, which would re­quire US$750m in ad­di­tion­al ex­ports by the end of 2026. Fur­ther, a 25% growth in non-en­er­gy ex­ports each year for four years will be re­quired to meet 2030 tar­gets. Not im­pos­si­ble, but that is a very steep chal­lenge. It will re­quire re­sources, ca­pac­i­ty, know-how and do-how. And it will re­quire syn­er­gy, which in to­day’s world means a seam­less in­ter­face via dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy.

The Gov­ern­ment hopes to un­leash the pow­er of 50 ex­ist­ing ex­port man­u­fac­tur­ers of the 750 or so firms that con­sti­tute the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in T&T and to chan­nel new ex­port in­vest­ments. Let’s hope that the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor can find a com­mon pur­pose on this ex­treme­ly daunt­ing task.