JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 18, 2025

Feed­back

Finding our economic stasis

by

20110907

The sub­tle mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the name of the Min­istry of Plan­ning, So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Re­struc­tur­ing, etc, to the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my sig­nals a fun­da­men­tal change in the Gov­ern­ment's short-lived phi­los­o­phy to­wards eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and, hence, its plan­ning. The change backs away from giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment the lead strate­gic role in mov­ing this econ­o­my to­wards an on-shore econ­o­my that should in its fledg­ling stages com­ple­ment our de­plet­ing re­source-based off­shore sec­tor and even­tu­al­ly re­place it. A re­sponse for pro­pos­als (RFP) from the Min­istry of Plan­ning for the In­vad­er's Bay de­vel­op­ment project states that this min­istry's role is medi­um- and long-term eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy plan­ning. Hence, one would ex­pect that with such a plan in place, any eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment that is gov­ern­ment-fa­cil­i­tat­ed or -dri­ven would fall with­in these poli­cies.

Prof John Spence in a re­cent con­tri­bu­tion in the press claims that he was un­able to find, for ex­am­ple, on this min­istry's Web site, a con­cise state­ment of its eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment plans: the medi­um- and long- term eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy plans. The fall­back po­si­tion of this min­istry is that it and its var­i­ous agen­cies will be guid­ed by the pil­lars for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo-gen­er­al state­ments that are far re­moved from pol­i­cy di­rec­tives. The Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my in the In­vad­er's Bay project is re­quest­ing pro­pos­als from the pri­vate sec­tor on how it (the pri­vate sec­tor) would de­vel­op some 70 acres of prime and ex­pen­sive re­claimed gov­ern­ment-owned wa­ter­front prop­er­ty ad­ja­cent to the cur­rent Movi­eTowne such that the project will:

• pro­vide jobs

• add val­ue to the ser­vice sec­tor and con­tribute to the liv­ing con­di­tions in the area

• gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change; fa­cil­i­tate the cap­i­tal's coast­line

• her­ald a new age in the de­vel­op­ment of wa­ter­front ur­ban cen­tres of the re­gion (in keep­ing with, for ex­am­ple, the sig­na­ture Dar­ling Har­bour of Aus­tralia and Dock­lands in Lon­don)

The pro­posed project is ex­pect­ed to as­sist in mak­ing this coun­try a world-class des­ti­na­tion for busi­ness and tourism, pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic in­clu­sion and fa­cil­i­tat­ing an era of pros­per­i­ty for all.

With­out any plan­ning pol­i­cy, the suc­cess­ful project pro­pos­al will be ap­proved by the Gov­ern­ment, as it were, in vac­uo. The cur­rent pri­vate sec­tor which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been un­able to build an on-shore econ­o­my, land­ing us with a gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed low risk pe­tro­le­um-based plan­ta­tion econ­o­my-one that in­stead of be­ing wealth-gen­er­at­ing has been the ve­hi­cle to dis­trib­ute in­equitably the rents gen­er­at­ed by the ex­ploita­tion of our de­plet­ing nat­ur­al re­sources-is to be­come the ar­chi­tect of our eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment is im­pos­si­ble if the present eco­nom­ic sys­tem re­mains un­changed. It has to be forced to adapt, to de­stroy some ex­ist­ing en­ti­ties and con­nec­tions and make oth­ers that are con­ducive to new com­pet­i­tive/in­no­v­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ties in this un­cer­tain glob­al en­vi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, this RFP by the Gov­ern­ment is about busi­ness as usu­al, con­firmed by re­cent com­ments from the Min­istry of En­er­gy that there is oil and gas aplen­ty-mim­ic­k­ing Patrick Man­ning, who told us in his time: why wor­ry we know what we are do­ing.

No change, just ex­change. Prof Bo Carls­son (Case West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, US) warns us that pub­lic pol­i­cy plan­ners can­not de­sign poli­cies and pro­ce­dures that point to ex­act out­comes; not in to­day's glob­al un­cer­tain­ty. He sug­gests that our plan­ners ar­tic­u­late a lead role for gov­ern­ment in the build­ing of an ex­per­i­men­tal­ly or­gan­ised econ­o­my, which trans­lates in­to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a na­tion­al in­no­va­tion sys­tem. Ex­tend­ing by com­ple­ment­ing Movi­etowne along the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front to look like Dar­ling Har­bour with­out Aus­tralia's eco­nom­ic strength is the same kind of win­dow dress­ing for which Man­ning was re­buked.

Vic­tor Darceuil

via e-mail


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored