Raphael John-Lall

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie says T&T is lag­ging be­hind many of its re­gion­al neigh­bours in terms of com­pet­i­tive­ness."We are not do­ing as well as we should giv­en our per capi­ta in­come be­cause we are not pro­duc­tive as we need to be com­pared with some oth­er coun­tries," he said.

"Bar­ba­dos is do­ing bet­ter than us. We are about where Ja­maica is. Most of the coun­tries of Latin Amer­i­ca have been mov­ing up in the sys­tem and we need to move up in a se­ri­ous way. It means we have got to ad­dress the is­sues of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­no­va­tion."

Tewarie spoke to the me­dia fol­low­ing a prepara­to­ry meet­ing for the V111 Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum T&T 2014 at the Hilton Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, St Ann's. He said they were fi­nal­is­ing the agen­da for the fo­rum which will bring busi­ness, gov­ern­ment and labour, civ­il so­ci­ety and acad­e­mia to­geth­er to dis­cuss com­pet­i­tive­ness and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.He warned that there will se­ri­ous con­se­quences if T&T does not im­prove on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

"It means that we will sell less goods in the ex­port mar­ket. It means we are not go­ing to have sec­tors in which we can com­pete with oth­er coun­tries. It means our busi­ness­es are go­ing to be very lim­it­ed in terms of where they are go­ing to sell. It means in terms of rank­ing in the world we will keep falling back. The com­pet­i­tive­ness is­sue and in­no­va­tion is­sue is im­por­tant for us," he said.Dr Tewarie said there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to be­come more com­pet­i­tive.

"We have just moved up in the com­pet­i­tive group in terms of coun­tries which means more is ex­pect­ed of us, so the chal­lenge of do­ing bet­ter is hard­er for us in T&T but we are com­mit­ted to mak­ing the coun­try as com­pet­i­tive as pos­si­ble," he said.The he said lo­cal com­pa­nies and oth­er sec­tors need to be more cre­ative.

"Our pub­lic sec­tor must al­so be more cre­ative, our gen­er­al ap­proach in terms of the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment should be cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive to achieve sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. Right now we are work­ing on an in­no­va­tion pol­i­cy for the coun­try. We will go out for con­sul­ta­tion soon for that," he said.