Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Plan­ning and Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie says as the Gov­ern­ment plans to spend $7 to $8 bil­lion on pub­lic sec­tor pro­grammes over the 2011/2012 fis­cal year, it would like the pri­vate sec­tor to sup­port the ini­tia­tive by in­vest­ing $2 bil­lion to help boost the econ­o­my. Tewarie said the Gov­ern­ment can­not do it alone and he called on the pri­vate sec­tor to in­vest more in­to the lo­cal and for­eign mar­kets in or­der to stim­u­late the growth that is re­quired to move the coun­try for­ward. Tewarie, who was speak­ing yes­ter­day on the top­ic of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and cre­at­ing wealth at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce at its West­moor­ings of­fice, said even though the fi­nal fig­ure was not yet de­ter­mined, the ex­act fig­ure would be an­nounced in the 2011/2012 bud­get. He said the pri­vate sec­tor would im­me­di­ate­ly ben­e­fit from the $7 to $8 bil­lion in­vest­ment. He not­ed that out of the $7 to $8 bil­lion, 75 per cent would be in­vest­ed in projects in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, while the 25 per cent would be di­rect­ed at trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my, in­no­va­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

He said as the Gov­ern­ment part­ners with Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty to de­vel­op Ch­aguara­mas, he chal­lenged the pri­vate sec­tor to sup­port the in­vest­ment. Tewarie said the coun­try can­not con­tin­ue to utilise the rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor to fu­el eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­ty, but need­ed to en­gage in dif­fer­ent in­no­v­a­tive ideas in or­der to get dif­fer­ent re­sults. He said the coun­try was hop­ing to achieve 1.2 per growth but may be lucky if it achieves one per cent. T&T econ­o­my, Tewarie said, was dom­i­nat­ed by small- to medi­um-size en­ter­pris­es and the low lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion in the do­mes­tic mar­ket place are struc­tur­al prob­lems that are dif­fi­cult to over­come. "But the low com­pet­i­tive­ness does not pre­pare us for the world. We need in­vest­ment from the ex­ist­ing pri­vate sec­tor to im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness, to ex­pand ex­ports, to be­gin to con­quer the world be­yond CARI­COM and to di­ver­si­fy their in­vest­ment port­fo­lio in align­ment with new mar­kets."

Even though T&T has done fair­ly well eco­nom­i­cal­ly, it lags be­hind the rest of the world in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­no­va­tion and clos­ing this gap is cen­tral to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, he said. Tewarie ad­vised that T&T must strive to dou­ble its ex­ports in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor in the next two years as the coun­try signs new trade and in­vest­ment agree­ments with the coun­tries of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Latin Amer­i­ca and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, which cur­rent­ly utilis­es un­der 70 per cent of ca­pac­i­ty must thrive for 100 per cent.

The ser­vices sec­tor has re­al prospects, he said, for ex­port growth es­pe­cial­ly in the knowl­edge and cre­ative ser­vices such as en­er­gy, IT, en­gi­neer­ing, en­ter­tain­ment and per­for­mance and cre­ative con­cepts and de­sign. But Tewarie said all this could not be achieve if there is no so­cial co­he­sion and con­sen­sus. "We have to build con­sen­sus in a small so­ci­ety (T&T) in or­der to make the quan­tum leap for growth and de­vel­op­ment to take place... not just for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion but in val­ue chain op­er­a­tion.