Rapheal John-Lall

Chair­man of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board Dr Ter­rence Far­rell says the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is do­ing lit­tle to ad­vance the wel­fare of the coun­try and has even been cre­at­ing some of the prob­lems that ex­ist to­day.

"There is in­er­tia on the part of the busi­ness lead­ers. The pri­vate sec­tor in T&T has been do­ing the same thing, buy­ing and sell­ing and putting a mark up for the last 200 years. There is no in­no­va­tion, they are not con­duct­ing R&D. They are look­ing for the best deals they can get from Japan and Chi­na to im­port to mark up. That is in­er­tia and poor work eth­ic on their part," he said yes­ter­day at the launch of the 2016-2017 Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex Rank­ings at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, Mt Hope.

Far­rell, who took part in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the launch, said while T&T's macro eco­nom­ic prob­lems are a re­sult of ex­ter­nal forces, there are oth­er is­sues that can be rec­ti­fied.

"There is the is­sue of the rule of law. Why do our in­sti­tu­tions op­er­ate the way they do? What is the way our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem op­er­ates that gives us the kinds of re­sults we have? From the Pres­i­den­cy to the ju­di­cia­ry to the Par­lia­ment to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion's Of­fice, all our in­sti­tu­tions in this coun­try are in cri­sis," he said.

Far­rell added that there was no lead­er­ship from the last Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor on the for­eign ex­change is­sue.

He ex­plained: "The Cen­tral Bank and Min­istry of Fi­nance have failed to lead the coun­try on the ques­tion of for­eign ex­change over the last few years, so that shows up in terms of the re­stric­tion of for­eign ex­change af­fect­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

He said there were his­tor­i­cal rea­sons for T&T's poor work eth­ic and low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and not all the blame should be thrown on work­ers.

"Our ex­ec­u­tives al­so have a work eth­ic prob­lem. The poor work eth­ic we see in the coun­try is as a re­sult of a cer­tain set of his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances that lead work­ers to be­have in the way they do. It is a re­sult of his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences we have had a as a peo­ple from slav­ery to in­den­ture­ship com­ing up to­day. Some peo­ple say those things took place 150 years ago but it does mat­ter to­day," Far­rell said.

T&T fell five places to 94 in the lat­est Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex Re­port. Bal­raj Kistow, lec­tur­er at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, said this was due to the de­cline in the econ­o­my and poor macro eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

"This year we have seen one ma­jor dif­fer­ence which is in T&T's macro eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment. Last year we were above av­er­age in terms of our macro econ­o­my but this year it was be­low and it was a ma­jor fac­tor why T&T fell five places," he said.

T&T dropped to 94 out of 138 coun­tries in the re­port while Switzer­land was in first place. Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos placed high­er than T&T at po­si­tions 75 and 72.