Rapheal John-Lall

T&T has moved up three places in the lat­est Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port, ris­ing from po­si­tion 92 to 89 out of 144 coun­tries. Bal­raj Kistow, a mem­ber of the fac­ul­ty of the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, un­veiled the lat­est rank­ings in a pre­sen­ta­tion at the school's Mount Hope cam­pus yes­ter­day.

"T&T is well ahead of the oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion in terms of how it has per­formed. We are com­pet­ing against the very best. We are seen in the world as one of the most de­vel­oped economies and we have been placed in the cat­e­go­ry of an in­no­va­tion dri­ven econ­o­my."We have lots of strong com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages such as ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and the macro eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment," he said.Switzer­land tops the lat­est glob­al rank­ings fol­lowed by Sin­ga­pore, while Guinea is at the bot­tom of the 2014 list.

The re­port as­sess­es the com­pet­i­tive­ness land­scape of 144 economies, pro­vid­ing in­sight in­to the dri­vers of their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty. It is re­gard­ed as the most com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness world­wide.The lat­est re­port says that the most prob­lem­at­ic fac­tors in do­ing busi­ness in T&T are in­ef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy, cor­rup­tion and poor work eth­ic.

The im­prove­ment in T&T's rank­ing was wel­comed by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine who said the rank­ings were an im­por­tant tool used by pol­i­cy mak­ers and gov­ern­ments to guide eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.He not­ed that T&T has very strong macro eco­nom­ic met­rics such as low un­em­ploy­ment and low in­fla­tion."We have been able to achieve a low lev­el of un­em­ploy­ment and the low­est ever record­ed of 3.7 per cent. We have al­so been able to keep un­em­ploy­ment low at four to five per cent.

"We now have in ex­cess of US$5 bil­lion in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) and this con­tributes to the ro­bust macro eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment which al­lows us to have pret­ty strong ex­pen­di­ture in health, ed­u­ca­tion and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," Ram­nar­ine said.The min­is­ter cit­ed re­cent ex­am­ples of Gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture on in­fra­struc­ture and so­cial ser­vices, in­clud­ing the chil­dren's hos­pi­tal in Cou­va and plans for new hos­pi­tals in San­gre Grande, Ari­ma and Point Fortin.

He al­so said there has been "tremen­dous progress" in high­er ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing and boast­ed that T&T now has some of the best skills in the en­er­gy sec­tor glob­al­ly."There are now more T&T na­tion­als mov­ing out­side the coun­try with their skills than those from out­side work­ing in T&T. This is a re­verse of the sit­u­a­tion we had in the 1970s and 1980s. We have some of the best en­er­gy tal­ent in the world and there are na­tion­als of the coun­try all over the world," he said.

The Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port said bu­reau­cra­cy is one of the main in­hi­bi­tions to do­ing busi­ness in T&T.Ram­nar­ine said: "The T&T Gov­ern­ment has pi­lot­ed the Pro­cure­ment Bill which will bring change in gov­er­nance and once passed, it will im­prove that rank­ing."Ad­mit­ting that "there is still a lot of work to be done" the min­is­ter added: "There are a lot of good things and chal­lenges that the Gov­ern­ment has to meet."