Raphael John-Lall

The coun­try's econ­o­my is in much bet­ter shape now than when the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice in 2010, Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said yes­ter­day."In­fla­tion was rag­ing at that time. De­spite what has hap­pened to our Cari­com neigh­bours and the de­vel­oped world, T&T has seen a turn around. We ex­pe­ri­enced growth last year, we ex­pect growth of 2.5 per cent this year. In­fla­tion is at an all time low of five per cent.

"We are en­joy­ing the low­est un­em­ploy­ment in this coun­try's his­to­ry. We have $10 bil­lion in ex­ter­nal re­serves and our Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund is al­most twice it was when we came in­to of­fice," he said in his ad­dress at the launch of the sec­ond phase pf TTBi­zLink's e-ser­vices at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.Bharath not­ed, how­ev­er, that if Gov­ern­ment and coun­try did not im­prove its ef­fi­cien­cy T&T would not be able com­pete on the world stage or even at the re­gion­al lev­el.

"We must take steps to be trans­for­ma­tion­al be­cause even­tu­al­ly glob­al trade will over­take us. Glob­al busi­ness­es will come in­to T&T and our lo­cal goods will suf­fer if we are not able to change our sys­tem," the min­is­ter said.Al­so speak­ing at the launch was Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz who said there would be im­prove­ment in mar­itime ser­vices.

"By the end of this year you will see a huge im­prove­ment in the way in which mar­itime ser­vices op­er­ate, whether it is deal­ing with the man­age­ment of the har­bour. We have a man­age­ment track­ing sys­tem com­ing in which plays a ma­jor part in run­ning mar­itime trans­port in T&T. We have the har­bour mas­ter, we have the nav aid sys­tem that is be­ing re­vamped," he said.Cadiz said the new sys­tems had re­sult­ed in a re­duc­tion of ship­ping times.

"We have moved from 45 days for a ves­sel to en­ter the port to sev­en days. That is telling you how much has been done. When we talk about de­liv­er­ables this is what we have been able to do. We lis­tened to the stake­hold­ers and asked what they need­ed. Every sin­gle im­port and ex­port has to do with fil­ings and how we can re­duce that time," Cadiz said.He added: "This will im­pact on the cost of do­ing busi­ness in T&T. It af­fects mar­ket share. Ef­fi­cien­cy breeds bet­ter earn­ing po­ten­tial."