While the re­port that T&T has been re­moved from the list of coun­tries which now qual­i­fy for de­vel­op­ment aid from the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) coun­tries would un­der­stand­ably elic­it an ex­pres­sion of pride, it ought not to be viewed with ec­sta­cy and eu­pho­ria. What this en­tails is that a source of as­sis­tance (in­clud­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance), which had hith­er­to been avail­able to this coun­try, has been closed off. It has been re­port­ed that the British high com­mis­sion­er has sug­gest­ed that the rea­son for the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion on the part of the OECD that T&T may have reached "de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus" (ac­cord­ing to OECD mea­sure­ments) is due to the rel­a­tive­ly high na­tion­al in­come which this coun­try en­joys.

I am left to won­der whether the coun­tries of the OECD, most of which are in fi­nan­cial straits at present due to the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, may be on the look­out for coun­tries which they can hive off from re­ceiv­ing fur­ther de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance. In this re­gard, T&T has to be high on the list. It must be point­ed out, how­ev­er, that a high per capi­ta na­tion­al in­come, in­deed even a high per capi­ta re­al na­tion­al in­come, is not in it­self a suf­fi­cient mea­sure of de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus. Of fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance to any mea­sure­ment is the dis­tri­b­u­tion of such in­come among the pop­u­la­tion and the as­so­ci­at­ed cri­te­ri­on of the pover­ty in­dex.

In fact, what is re­quired is an in­dex of the lev­el of liv­ing, as demon­strat­ed not on­ly by eq­ui­tably dis­trib­uted per capi­ta re­al na­tion­al in- come but al­so by the lev­el of so­cial ser­vices, such as health, ed­u­ca­tion and fam­i­ly ser­vices, care of the youth, the aged, the dis­abled, and the dis­pos­sessed. In­deed, a sit­u­a­tion where­in no cit­i­zen has rea­son­ably been left want­i­ng. In short, de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus is at­tained when the pop­u­la­tion of a coun­try is able to sub­sist com­fort­ably in an econ­o­my which is self-re­liant and grow­ing at a rate such that its cit­i­zens can ex­pect an in­creas­ing lev­el of av­er­age re­al in­come. Al­so in­volved is the ex­is­tence of a po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and in­sti­tu­tions which are ac­com­mo­dat­ing and are gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed by the pop­u­la­tion. Has T&T at­tained the fun­da­men­tal cri­te­ria to jus­ti­fy its be­ing re­clas­si­fied? We await the OECD.

Er­rol OC Cu­pid

Trinci­ty, Tacarigua