T&T has tak­en steps to in­crease its in­vest­ment prospects by im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been clam­our­ing for over the years.This ac­cord­ing to Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, who, in dis­clos­ing two of these mea­sures which he said would go a long way to mak­ing this coun­try a more in­vest­ment-friend­ly na­tion.

On his pos­si­ble run for the va­cant Ch­agua­nas West seat giv­en up by for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, Bharath said he has not been ap­proached by any UNC of­fi­cial to do so.

Q: Mr Bharath, did you in your wildest po­lit­i­cal dreams ever think the UNC would reach this stage, hav­ing to de­fend one of its seats in a by-elec­tion sce­nario?

A: (A som­bre ex­pres­sion at his Nicholas Tow­er of­fice, down­town Port-of-Spain, Wednes­day af­ter­noon) Well, I think those who are more ex­pe­ri­enced than I am in pol­i­tics will tell you that you al­ways have to ex­pect the un­ex­pect­ed.

But it is not a ma­jor shock or sur­prise to me be­cause this is not the first time this has hap­pened in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape.

But hasn't the Prime Min­is­ter on more than one oc­ca­sion boast­ed that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion and the UNC, the ma­jor com­po­nent of the coali­tion, are strong and so on?

The record will show that Mr Warn­er re­signed on his own vo­li­tion and there has been no ques­tion of him be­ing kicked out of the posts he re­cent­ly quit.The fact is be­cause the par­ty is strong and has the prop­er struc­tures in place that res­ig­na­tion from some­one with the sta­tus of Mr Warn­er could be ac­cept­ed and the par­ty will con­tin­ue to func­tion.

Isn't this sit­u­a­tion giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion am­mu­ni­tion to fire at the PP regime?

One could say that, but I think al­so that as lead­ers in our own right we have got to al­ways do what we think is right for the coun­try and min­is­ter Warn­er at this time has felt he has done the right thing in the in­ter­est of the coun­try.

Even though he has said he vol­un­teered his res­ig­na­tion, there is still the lin­ger­ing per­cep­tion that he was forced to do so by the Prime Min­is­ter.

(A huge grin) Well, I can't com­ment on that, be­cause I was not in the room with both of them, so I have to go with what they both said, which is that he vol­un­teered his res­ig­na­tion from the Cab­i­net as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

I want to sug­gest that you are be­ing very diplo­mat­ic in that re­sponse.

(Bursts out laugh­ing) I gen­er­al­ly try to be as open and hon­est as I can and as I said truth­ful­ly, I don't know the an­swer to that ques­tion and I re­peat, both of them have said pub­licly he was not forced to quit his cab­i­net post.

I am sure that the PP's de­trac­tors are say­ing the PP is on its back leg and they could bowl them out any time now.

(Clear­ing his throat): That would be a ma­jor mis­take for any­one to think; the par­ty is ex­treme­ly strong and it has been well es­tab­lished for a long time. We do have func­tion­ing arms of the par­ty and you know that every or­gan­i­sa­tion here and abroad will have is­sues to deal with from time to time. And how you deal with them is how you come out of them.

Mr Bharath, your crit­ics are say­ing that in spite of the spin com­ing from the par­ty that the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process is at work, the PP does not en­joy the same nu­mer­i­cal and oth­er kind of sup­port it did in May 2010?

Clevon, the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple have con­fi­dence in the par­ty, which has em­barked on a tremen­dous amount of work. A lot of it was cor­rec­tive work, a lot is new work.And if one should sep­a­rate a lot of the neg­a­tive noise from the work that the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing you will see that there has been a tremen­dous amount of work...

Such as?

In­fra­struc­tur­al, cre­ation of jobs and new in­vest­ment com­ing to T&T. So I think gen­er­al­ly the peo­ple still have that lev­el of con­fi­dence in the PP Gov­ern­ment that it is still the best to gov­ern T&T.

Mr Min­is­ter, even though you are speak­ing op­ti­misti­cal­ly about the per­for­mance of the Gov­ern­ment, there is this nag­ging per­cep­tion of cracks in the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Well, there would al­ways be crit­i­cisms from small pock­ets of peo­ple who ob­vi­ous­ly have their own agen­das.But you see, Clevon, I was hop­ing that (slight frown) we could con­cen­trate on the many of the good pieces of work that the Gov­ern­ment has em­barked up­on.(Quick­ly stress­ing) I am in no way sug­gest­ing that you con­duct your in­ter­view in any par­tic­u­lar style, but the Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing very well in spite of the many crit­i­cisms we are re­ceiv­ing from de­trac­tors.

Be­fore we go there, what does the stag­ing of the by-elec­tion say about the co­he­sive­ness of the PP regime?

I to­tal­ly dis­agree with the propo­si­tion that there are cracks in the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion and clear­ly it is the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process is at work, and Mr Warn­er in his own opin­ion made the best de­ci­sion, which is to re­sign and to seek re-val­i­da­tion from his con­stituents.That is democ­ra­cy at work, so there­fore I do not be­lieve there is the need for any ma­jor fix­ing of any sup­posed cracks at this time.

Sen­a­tor Bharath, do you agree that the mis­steps by gov­ern­ment func­tionar­ies have con­tributed to the per­cep­tion that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is not per­form­ing as it ought to?

(Cross­ing his legs and left palm cup­ping his chin) Well, clear­ly we could have done with­out them, but as I just said, it is al­ways a ques­tion of how you deal with them. Mis­takes will al­ways be made, whether it is this or any oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion, and I think the Prime Min­is­ter has dealt with them in a man­ner that has in­spired con­fi­dence in the pop­u­la­tion.I am not say­ing that we will make no more mis­takes: we would not be hu­mans if that was the case, and the ques­tion is not to re­peat those mis­takes.

Ok. Let's look briefly at your ma­jor port­fo­lio, trade and in­vest­ments. The pri­vate sec­tor is still com­plain­ing about the lack of ac­tiv­i­ties such as new in­vest­ments and so on. What is your biggest chal­lenge in this re­gard?

I think we've got to place that state­ment you just made in the con­text of the fact that the en­tire world suf­fered a glob­al re­ces­sion. If one looks at the lat­est ca­su­al­ty: Cyprus. Greece is now in its sixth year of re­ces­sion.

While that may be so, we are still in the for­tu­nate po­si­tion of hav­ing an ex­cel­lent for­eign re­serve fig­ure, so why...?

(An­tic­i­pat­ing the ques­tion). All of our trad­ing part­ners are suf­fer­ing from re­ces­sion such as the Unit­ed States, Japan. Our Cari­com neigh­bours are in the throes of the IMF. Ja­maica is go­ing back to the IMF for the sec­ond time in three years. Grena­da is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty to pay its debts.So our part­ners are suf­fer­ing from this re­ces­sion and there­fore we are fac­ing the rip­ple ef­fect of a lack of trade with these coun­tries.

What plans do you have to let's say, kick-start the econ­o­my?

It comes back to the orig­i­nal ques­tion you were ask­ing about in­vest­ments in T&T. Clevon, the biggest prob­lem we have had of course is the fact we have had a sig­nif­i­cant amount of bu­reau­cra­cy that ex­ists.In the first week that I be­came Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment I met the pri­vate sec­tor, who said that they do not need any fur­ther in­cen­tives. What they need is for the red tape to be cut.

What kind of cor­rec­tive mea­sures have been tak­en in this di­rec­tion?

For the last ten months or so we have been work­ing on that to en­sure that we cre­ate the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to al­low that con­fi­dence to re­turn for in­vest­ment.

I will give you just two ex­am­ples. First, when I came in­to of­fice we were told by the World Bank that it took 43 days to set up a busi­ness in T&T. In Sin­ga­pore it is one day; South Ko­rea, three days.

So when in­vestors looked at our coun­try in com­par­i­son with some of our Asian coun­ter­parts they are go­ing to be re­luc­tant to come to a place like Trinidad if we do not fix those is­sues.Clevon, we have now moved that 43-day pe­ri­od to three days and I have en­shrined it in­to leg­is­la­tion.The oth­er one we are work­ing on right now is Cus­toms.

What's the bug­bear down there?

Many peo­ple who do busi­ness through our bor­ders will know that it takes an in­or­di­nate amount of time to clear con­tain­ers ei­ther in or out of the coun­try...an av­er­age of 90 days, and we are told by the WB it takes about 19 days else­where.We have tak­en steps (leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions) to en­sure that these units are cleared with­in 24 hours, in and out of T&T.

So we are mov­ing ex­pe­di­tious­ly with the pri­vate sec­tor to en­sure they con­duct their op­er­a­tions in a very com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, to the ben­e­fit of their en­ter­prise and ul­ti­mate­ly T&T.

Fi­nal­ly, Sen­a­tor Bharath, your name has popped up as a pos­si­ble UNC can­di­date for the Ch­agua­nas West seat left va­cant with the res­ig­na­tion of Jack Warn­er. What's your take on that pos­si­bil­i­ty?

Well, that is a very pre­ma­ture mat­ter as the seat has not yet been de­clared va­cant.But that dis­cus­sion has not been had with me and as far as I am aware the par­ty will make that de­ci­sion based on the screen­ing process.

If you are asked to con­test it?

I have a lot of work on my min­is­te­r­i­al desk and I do have a very ag­gres­sive and heavy agen­da for the next two years, and I think my re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with re­gard to those re­al­ly takes up all my en­er­gy at this time.