Sean Nero

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran says T&T needs to turn to the di­as­po­ra to help with a po­ten­tial­ly crip­pling skills deficit in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor.Speak­ing at an In­sti­tute of Bank­ing and Fi­nance of T&T (IBFTT) grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad on Sat­ur­day evening, Ram­bar­ran said like many lead­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions the Cen­tral Bank is not im­mune to this wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion.

"T&T needs to be able to draw from a big­ger pool than it cur­rent­ly has. We are see­ing greater de­mand for spe­cialised fi­nan­cial skills: an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing, ac­tu­ar­i­al sci­ence, risk man­age­ment and wealth man­age­ment. Such a process of re­cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion should be­gin by ad­dress­ing the need to draw out pock­ets of tal­ent that cur­rent­ly re­mains un­tapped. Here we should quick­ly lever­age our Trinida­di­an di­as­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty. Our di­as­po­ra in­cludes first and high­er gen­er­a­tion mi­grants, as well as peo­ple who have his­tor­i­cal links with T&T and can po­ten­tial­ly con­tribute to its wel­fare," he said. Ram­bar­ran added, "Many of us have a nar­row de­f­i­n­i­tion of the di­as­po­ra as those born in the coun­try, but liv­ing out­side the coun­try. How­ev­er, if we in­clude oth­ers with his­tor­i­cal links to T&T, our di­as­po­ra be­comes at least 360,000 strong, con­sist­ing of high­ly skilled work­ers, grad­u­ates from col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, man­age­ment and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als. We need to find ways to ful­ly tap in­to this po­ten­tial labour pool for hu­man cap­i­tal and fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment."

Ram­bar­ran high­light­ed the im­por­tance of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) Pro­gramme not­ing than an av­er­age of 53,000 stu­dents an­nu­al­ly had ben­e­fit­ted from it over the past five years.

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned its ef­fec­tive­ness, not­ing that 70 per cent of GATE fund­ing fo­cused on man­age­ment, ed­u­ca­tion­al ser­vices, da­ta pro­cess­ing/IT, en­gi­neer­ing, health ser­vices, nat­ur­al and pure sci­ences and ac­count­ing. He sug­gest­ed that the pro­gramme be bet­ter aligned to the coun­try's eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ties and fu­ture skills needs.

"Fi­nance, of course, is one eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ty area. At the Cen­tral Bank, we are help­ing to build this fi­nan­cial eco-sys­tem through two ma­jor ini­tia­tives. Over the past decade, we have part­nered with De La Rue, our cur­ren­cy print­ers, to of­fer the an­nu­al pres­ti­gious De La Rue Schol­ar­ship to stu­dents pur­su­ing post-grad­u­ate stud­ies in eco­nom­ics.

"This year, as we cel­e­brate our 50th an­niver­sary, we are of­fer­ing five De La Rue Schol­ar­ships be­yond eco­nom­ics to fi­nance and ac­tu­ar­i­al sci­ence, ar­eas in which we are build­ing skills. From 2015, we will of­fer three De La Rue Schol­ar­ships," he said. Ram­bar­ran added: "Since 2007, we have spear­head­ed the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Pro­gramme (NFLP) to equip our cit­i­zens with the knowl­edge, skills and tools to make in­formed fi­nan­cial de­ci­sion. We are now trans­form­ing the NFLP in­to an ac­cred­it­ed train­ing agency. One of the pro­grammes of this new agency will be a cer­tifi­cate in Cen­tral Bank­ing that will pro­vide our en­try lev­el staff with broad-based knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, fi­nan­cial su­per­vi­sion and re­serve man­age­ment."

He said an­oth­er op­tion for fill­ing the skills gap is to make it eas­i­er for the mo­bil­i­ty of work­ers in the re­gion, as well as es­tab­lish­ing a com­mon frame­work for skills recog­ni­tion to give em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees the con­fi­dence to move more freely across bor­ders.Ram­bar­ran said there re­ports of dif­fi­cul­ties be­ing faced by fi­nance and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als mov­ing from one coun­try to an­oth­er be­cause their qual­i­fi­ca­tions are not recog­nised.

"I have heard one high­ly suc­cess­ful Trinidad busi­ness­man lament that it is far eas­i­er for him to hire a se­cu­ri­ty guard from Nige­ria, than to em­ploy a fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst from Nige­ria. At a time when skills short­ages are acute, such bar­ri­ers can­not be al­lowed to re­main. We need to con­sid­er cre­at­ing a com­mon frame­work for skills recog­ni­tion that gives em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees the con­fi­dence they needs to move more freely across bor­ders," he said.

"In the longer term, we need to re­view the fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture that gov­erns skills and hu­man cap­i­tal, if we are to avoid break­downs in the fu­ture. We must de­vel­op a strong eco-sys­tem that puts pro­grammes in place to ad­dress the fi­nan­cial skills gaps be­fore they be­come more crit­i­cal. As we seek to build a knowl­edge dri­ven econ­o­my, ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion must play an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant role in en­hanc­ing the coun­try's hu­man cap­i­tal base. Ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion im­parts knowl­edge and high-lev­el skills, as well as pro­vides ba­sic and ap­plied re­search need­ed to sup­port in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship."