Aleem Khan

There are a num­ber of par­al­lels be­tween Aus­tralia and T&T lo­cal busi­ness­es should be tak­ing ad­van­tage of, said Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion­er Philip Ken­twell.

"Cre­ative busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs" could look at some of the par­al­lels and make mon­ey out of the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences be­tween the two Eng­lish-speak­ing Com­mon­wealth coun­tries, he said.

"When one looks at the time zone dif­fer­ence be­tween Aus­tralia and Trinidad, I think a very clever com­pa­ny could look at the avail­able re­sources, and be­come a 24-hour on­line busi­ness quite eas­i­ly."

When the T&T work day is wind­ing down, Aus­tralia, which is about ten and 12 hours ahead, is now wak­ing up, and this cir­cum­stance lends it­self very well to com­pa­nies that need to op­er­ate 24 hours a day, such as the air­line in­dus­try, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, tech­ni­cal sup­port, call cen­tres and oth­ers.

Giv­en that time is mon­ey, he said some pro­fes­sion­al in­dus­tries, like the le­gal pro­fes­sion and ar­chi­tec­ture, should al­so be cap­i­tal­is­ing on the time dif­fer­ence.

"In in­stances where a le­gal opin­ion is need­ed with­in 24 hours, or ar­chi­tec­tur­al draw­ings or build­ing de­signs are need­ed fast, there is no rea­son Aus­tralian and T&T com­pa­nies could not form part­ner­ships to pro­vide that speed of ser­vice to cus­tomers who need it. While one coun­try is asleep, the oth­er is work­ing."

He said T&T's labour costs are not so ex­pen­sive, so that would be a plus, too.

"The great chal­lenge for Aus­tralia in look­ing at ex­pand­ing in­vest­ments to this re­gion, of course, is that the re­al growth economies in the world are Chi­na and In­dia. Of course, they hap­pen to be in our hemi­sphere, so the nat­ur­al in­stinct of Aus­tralian busi­ness is to look at the ex­port mar­kets of 1.5 bil­lion and three bil­lion that are avail­able in those two coun­tries, and in Asia gen­er­al­ly.

"Hav­ing said that, I think there is great po­ten­tial and scope for cre­ative busi­ness­peo­ple to carve out mar­kets where growth and de­mand is go­ing to con­tin­ue in­to the fu­ture," Ken­twell said in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Sep­tem­ber 18.

"Why are T&T ar­chi­tects who are fa­mil­iar with build­ing de­signs to cope with hot weath­er con­di­tions and strong winds not pro­vid­ing de­signs to Aus­tralia and oth­er ar­eas in the world where there are sim­i­lar con­di­tions?" he asked.

"I think there could be some cre­ative en­er­gy put in­to that and there should be some win-wins. Whether this hap­pens in the short term, or at all, it is some­thing worth look­ing at."

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Aus­tralia has been an ex­porter of goat meat and cheeses to T&T. Aus­tralia is the largest provider of goat meat to T&T. The land "down un­der" has held on to its cheese and oth­er niche mar­kets since pre-in­de­pen­dence days.

In the en­er­gy sec­tor too, "BHP Bil­li­ton has been here for a good num­ber of years" and has been pro­vid­ing steady em­ploy­ment to T&T na­tion­als, the high com­mis­sion­er said.

On­ly a few months ago, he said, BHP Bil­li­ton hired its first Aus­tralian to work here.

Ex­tract­ing oil from sand

Al­so in en­er­gy, Ken­twell said he ex­pects an Aus­tralian com­pa­ny to bring some un­prece­dent­ed tech­nol­o­gy to T&T.

"We all know there are pres­sures mount­ing on the world's re­sources more gen­er­al­ly, and I know there is, for in­stance, an Aus­tralian oil sand com­pa­ny which has been in dis­cus­sions with Trinidad in re­cent years, and is com­ing back again next month for fur­ther dis­cus­sions with Petrotrin to look at what can be done with har­vest­ing oil sands," he said.

While not pur­port­ing to be an en­er­gy ex­pert, he said, "As I un­der­stand it, in coun­tries which have de­posits of oil, there is of­ten al­lu­vial oil that is in the sand, and this process ac­tu­al­ly ex­tracts the oil from the sand to make it a saleable com­mod­i­ty."

Aus­tralian tech­nol­o­gy has al­so been trans­port­ing T&T na­tion­als by sea.

Four new wa­ter fer­ries–the Ca­lyp­so Sprint­er, Tri­ni Flash, Paria Bul­let and the Car­ni­val Run­ner–were built in Aus­tralia.

The sale of those ves­sels, which have hap­pened in the last fours years, have con­sid­er­ably dis­tort­ed the bal­ance of trade and trade fig­ures in Aus­tralia's favour, he said, yet "they were one-offs, al­though there is hope for re­peat sales" and new sales in the re­gion where there is prospect for sim­i­lar trans­ac­tions.

Still, thanks to its tra­di­tion­al ex­ports of meats and cheeses, the trade sur­plus usu­al­ly is on the Aus­tralian side, out­weigh­ing T&T's ex­ports of am­mo­nia and An­gos­tu­ra bit­ters.

As was wide­ly pub­li­cised in the press, T&T al­so bought 50 Com­modores cars for po­lice ve­hi­cles over the last few months, he said. "Com­modores are very good cars. They used to be pop­u­lar in T&T," he said.

Asked who is the deal­er, he said there is no of­fi­cial deal­er, but "there may be deal­er of sorts be­cause some­one has to im­port the (spare) parts."

Clear­ly, Aus­tralia can­not com­pete in the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tries where the cost of freight "cuts us out of the mar­ket" while oth­ers like the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope are clos­er.

Look­ing at di­ver­si­fy­ing from those tra­di­tion­al ar­eas, he said he is start­ing to see that the Aus­tralian ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor is part­ner­ing with ed­u­ca­tion providers here in T&T to de­liv­er Aus­tralian ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in spe­cif­ic niche fields.

"As I un­der­stand it, there are some­thing like 300 Trinidad stu­dents who are cur­rent­ly study­ing for an Aus­tralian qual­i­fi­ca­tion at (one of the) four lo­cal ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions (in this part­ner­ship)."

Ken­twell said the Aus­tralian busi­ness ed­u­ca­tor is al­so ex­pand­ing to Guyana and St Lu­cia, "go­ing wider in the re­gion."

He said there may al­so be good scope for Aus­tralia to con­tribute more as­sertive­ly in in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) ed­u­ca­tion tools, de­liv­er­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes through ICT, maybe to chil­dren, and to per­sons liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties.

He said he thinks there is scope in this area be­cause "Aus­tralia is quite good at ICT and our pro­gram­mers have a sim­i­lar back­ground, be­ing less Amer­i­can."

Not that any­thing is wrong with be­ing Amer­i­can, the high com­mis­sion­er said, but there may be mar­ket for per­sons want­i­ng to fol­low an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem "more sim­i­lar to our own."

Deep­er co-op­er­a­tion

Oth­er ar­eas for po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Aus­tralian and T&T com­pa­nies, the high com­mis­sion­er said, in­clude con­fer­ence tourism and wa­ter man­age­ment.

"I think T&T has had some re­mark­able suc­cess­es that it has tried to pro­mote. I look at con­fer­ence tourism, and Aus­tralia is a very pop­u­lar con­fer­ence tourist des­ti­na­tion, and it may well be that there is some room for the two coun­tries to work in part­ner­ship, or (pur­sue) skills trans­fer or knowl­edge trans­fer, shar­ing of tech­nolo­gies, or what­ev­er it may be, to be shared, be­cause I think if one looks at tourism in Trinidad, there is no rea­son why Trinidad shouldn't be­come the pre­mier con­fer­ence tourism des­ti­na­tion in the Caribbean.

"Busi­ness­peo­ple al­ways like to go to nice des­ti­na­tions, but you don't want to put them in a re­sort (on a beach) be­cause you won't get any work done."

An­oth­er area for col­lab­o­ra­tive work is wa­ter man­age­ment, Ken­twell said.

"In Aus­tralia, we have had to learn to man­age wa­ter clev­er­ly and I know this chal­lenge ex­ists here in Trinidad."

This may be an area where Aus­tralian and T&T com­pa­nies can work to­geth­er, he said.

As for T&T prod­ucts that have the po­ten­tial to be good ex­ports to Aus­tralia, the diplo­mat who has been here for the past five years, said, "There are a cou­ple of prod­ucts with po­ten­tial, but the dif­fi­cul­ty with vol­ume may be a prob­lem for T&T."

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, he said, "Some of the best choco­late I've ever eat­en comes from Trinidad. There are some won­der­ful choco­late prod­ucts here that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly in huge sup­ply. Look at how suc­cess­ful Bel­gium and Switzer­land have be­come at ex­port­ing choco­late. There's no rea­son T&T can't be­come a ma­jor ex­porter of choco­late."

He said the same is true for pep­per sauce.

He thinks there is re­al po­ten­tial for lo­cal hot sauces be­cause most peo­ple on­ly know about tabas­co, and "once you've tried some­thing oth­er than tabas­co, you re­al­ize how tasty the va­ri­eties can be."

He said that Aus­tralia's in­creas­ing­ly cos­mopoli­tan pop­u­la­tion is broad­en­ing the hori­zons of what Aus­tralians will buy.

Ken­twell said one out of every four Aus­tralians is born over­seas.

He said while Aus­tralia might be a very large is­land, it is "still an is­land, an is­land con­ti­nent."