In the midst of the deep con­cern re­gard­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s safe­ty be­cause of the con­flict be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, Caribbean econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Comp­ton Bourne, is point­ing to the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the re­gion, those which are per­ma­nent com­pared to the tran­sient dan­ger of pos­si­ble war.

In a state­ment to a Cari­com con­fer­ence, Bourne warned of the need to mod­ernise the tourism sec­tor, the most wide­spread eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of the largest num­ber of Cari­com mem­ber states. It is ad­vice which should be in­struc­tive to all mem­bers of the re­gion­al group­ing, since the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) notes that on av­er­age, 32 per cent of the re­gion’s col­lec­tive GDP comes from tourism.

To take a nar­row view of mat­ters re­lat­ed to tourism, it may be stat­ed that the T&T econ­o­my is in the low­er brack­et of tourism de­pen­dence. While that ini­tial fig­ure can on the sur­face be seen as be­ing a low-lev­el in­volve­ment, T&T’s spin-off in­dus­try from tourism, i.e., man­u­fac­tur­ing, is very al­lied to tourism. For in­stance, the T&T man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on ex­port­ing its goods and ser­vices to the tourism-based economies of Cari­com.

T&T, there­fore, like the rest of the re­gion, is locked in­to tourism. As re­port­ed in Thurs­day’s Busi­ness Guardian, Pro­fes­sor Bourne, for­mer prin­ci­pal of UWI’s St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and pres­i­dent of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, told a World Trade Cen­tre fo­rum in Guyana that Cari­com has been los­ing ground in tourism to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Puer­to Ri­co.

Soar­ing tax­es in in­tra-re­gion­al air trav­el and in the ho­tel sec­tor is said by Pro­fes­sor Bourne to be suf­fo­cat­ing de­mand, es­pe­cial­ly in in­tra-re­gion­al air trav­el. He not­ed the mas­sive po­ten­tial for eco-tourism des­ti­na­tions such as Guyana, which re­mains an “un­tapped gold mine.” The econ­o­mist al­so points to the need for ex­pan­sion of the In­ter­net and on­line ca­pac­i­ty in the re­gion to fa­cil­i­tate oth­er as­pects of trade, not­ing this is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to stream re­gion­al con­tent to the world.

Bourne al­so not­ed that re­gion­al am­bi­tions to con­nect close­ly with Latin Amer­i­ca and Africa for trade pur­pos­es are struc­tural­ly weak with­out trans­port link­ages and sup­ply chains to sup­port the am­bi­tions for clos­er eco­nom­ic trade.

At the con­fer­ence in Guyana, Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ram­say Ali not­ed that present hur­dles sur­round­ing in­ter­nal trade, in­clud­ing har­monised im­port rules and the 40 per cent Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff which gov­erns re­gion­al trade, are in need of as­sess­ment.

A tourism prod­uct fo­cused on trade in ser­vices has been con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed by T&T econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James. He has in­di­cat­ed there is a need for space in the tourism sec­tor on a wide­spread ba­sis to fo­cus on mod­ernising pro­duc­tion. Based in To­ba­go, Dr James has said that the re­search is show­ing that ed­u­ca­tion, med­ical ser­vices and oth­er forms are vi­able op­tions for up­grad­ing and en­hanc­ing the tourism prod­uct of the re­gion.

Re­lat­ing specif­i­cal­ly to the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go, suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ad­min­is­tra­tions have talked long and hard about the need for se­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try on the sis­ter isle. The plead­ing voic­es of hote­liers, tour op­er­a­tors, taxi dri­vers and oth­ers deeply im­mersed in tourism have for decades been raised for a stim­u­lat­ed and sup­port­ed tourism in­dus­try by the THA and the gov­ern­ment. Will those re­quests be se­ri­ous­ly act­ed up­on?