Busi­ness in­vest­ment de­ci­sions are long-term and based on as­sump­tions about the en­vi­ron­ment in which com­pa­nies op­er­ate. These in­clude cus­tomer be­hav­iour, com­peti­tors, tech­nol­o­gy and gov­ern­ment poli­cies re­flect­ed in laws and reg­u­la­tions. While busi­ness­es un­der­stand risk, it is mea­sur­able. When those as­sump­tions change, com­pa­nies must adapt, change their busi­ness mod­els or leave the mar­ket.

Nestlé re­cent­ly an­nounced plans to sell its dairy and juice man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go fol­low­ing a glob­al re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise. The com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to serve the lo­cal mar­ket through dis­tri­b­u­tion rather than pro­duc­tion. Read­ers may al­so re­call that Unilever Caribbean ceased man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions at its Champs Fleurs fa­cil­i­ty in 2022.

The labour move­ment will un­der­stand­ably be con­cerned about the loss of jobs. How­ev­er, busi­ness­es can­not be ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing if they are no longer prof­itable. The un­com­fort­able re­al­i­ty is that T&T is be­com­ing less at­trac­tive as a man­u­fac­tur­ing base for multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery high­light­ed a sim­i­lar chal­lenge.

It is un­re­al­is­tic to ex­pect gov­ern­ments to step in sim­ply to save jobs. There are lim­its to what any ad­min­is­tra­tion can do, es­pe­cial­ly when sub­si­dies and trans­fers al­ready con­sume a sub­stan­tial share of pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture. Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not to run busi­ness­es but to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that is trans­par­ent, pre­dictable and com­pet­i­tive.

Three im­por­tant ques­tions arise. First, what has changed to re­duce T&T’s at­trac­tive­ness as an in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion? Sec­ond, what lessons should pol­i­cy­mak­ers draw from these de­vel­op­ments? Third, how can the coun­try im­prove its com­pet­i­tive­ness?

These ques­tions are es­pe­cial­ly rel­e­vant be­cause the Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism has set an am­bi­tious tar­get of in­creas­ing non-en­er­gy ex­ports by US$5 bil­lion. Achiev­ing that ob­jec­tive will re­quire more than op­ti­mism. It will de­mand sig­nif­i­cant re­forms to gov­ern­ment pro­ce­dures and im­prove­ments in trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, in­vest­ment ap­provals and the over­all ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Speak­ing at the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion last week, the min­is­ter re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that gov­ern­ment poli­cies were harm­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers. He ar­gued that busi­ness con­fi­dence re­mained strong and that com­pa­nies must make de­ci­sions nec­es­sary to re­main com­pet­i­tive and man­age costs.

Yet gov­ern­ment’s role should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. The on­go­ing le­gal dis­pute in­volv­ing share­hold­ers of a pri­vate com­pa­ny and the ac­qui­si­tion of hold­ing leas­es on state lands rais­es trou­bling ques­tions. The com­pa­ny claims that the mat­ter in­volved a process span­ning 19 years and four ad­min­is­tra­tions. How can a lease re­new­al take near­ly two decades with­out res­o­lu­tion, on­ly to end in a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion?

The is­sue ex­tends be­yond one com­pa­ny. How many busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als face sim­i­lar un­re­solved lease and land mat­ters? Many en­ter­pris­es op­er­at­ing on state-leased lands in in­dus­tri­al es­tates re­port com­pa­ra­ble dif­fi­cul­ties. De­lays, un­cer­tain­ty and in­con­sis­tent de­ci­sion-mak­ing dis­cour­age in­vest­ment and un­der­mine con­fi­dence.

Will the cur­rent im­passe in­volv­ing the Hadeeds be­come a mod­el for fu­ture ac­tions? Can a coun­try claim to sup­port ease of do­ing busi­ness when com­mer­cial land mat­ters re­main un­re­solved for years? In­vestors val­ue cer­tain­ty as much as in­cen­tives.

If Trinidad and To­ba­go hopes to at­tract in­vest­ment, grow ex­ports and di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my, the pub­lic sec­tor must op­er­ate with greater trans­paren­cy, ef­fi­cien­cy and con­sis­ten­cy. Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness are part­ners in de­vel­op­ment. Cre­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment that pro­duces win-win out­comes is not sim­ply an op­por­tu­ni­ty—it is an eco­nom­ic ne­ces­si­ty.