Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs says the pro­posed US$750 mil­lion re­vival of the Point Lisas steel plant could pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant boost to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, but be­lieves the true mea­sure of the in­vest­ment will be the last­ing ben­e­fits it cre­ates for the coun­try.

Attzs said the pro­posed in­vest­ment comes at an im­por­tant time for T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly as geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments are prompt­ing coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, to di­ver­si­fy strate­gic sup­ply chains.

She said at­tract­ing pro­duc­tive in­vest­ment re­mains crit­i­cal to gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic growth and em­ploy­ment while strength­en­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“It is al­so no se­cret that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States ap­pear to en­joy pos­i­tive re­la­tions, cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial in­vest­ment,” Attzs said.

She not­ed that amid con­cerns about ac­tiv­i­ty in parts of the do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor, an in­vest­ment of this mag­ni­tude, if suc­cess­ful­ly re­alised, could help re­store con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, the an­nounce­ment is en­cour­ag­ing. The re­al mea­sure of suc­cess, how­ev­er, will not be the size of the in­vest­ment, but the size of its lega­cy for the peo­ple and econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

The com­ments fol­low the an­nounce­ment that US-backed Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny plans to restart the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant at Point Lisas, with the in­vest­ment ex­pect­ed to even­tu­al­ly reach US$750 mil­lion.

Asked whether T&T risked be­ing ex­ploit­ed as the Unit­ed States seeks to se­cure strate­gic re­sources, Attzs said there was not enough in­for­ma­tion avail­able about the pro­posed in­vest­ment be­yond what had been pub­licly re­port­ed to reach such a con­clu­sion.

She said in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments are gen­er­al­ly dri­ven by mu­tu­al in­ter­ests, with the US po­ten­tial­ly se­cur­ing ac­cess to strate­gic ma­te­ri­als while T&T stands to ben­e­fit from in­vest­ment, em­ploy­ment, ex­ports and re­newed in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Attzs said en­sur­ing that T&T re­ceives last­ing ben­e­fits will de­pend heav­i­ly on the ne­go­ti­a­tions sur­round­ing the project.

“As­sum­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions are fair and con­duct­ed in good faith, I am see­ing this as a part­ner­ship where both coun­tries can ben­e­fit,” she said.

Attzs said T&T’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives must en­sure the coun­try se­cures last­ing val­ue through lo­cal em­ploy­ment, tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer, op­por­tu­ni­ties for do­mes­tic busi­ness­es and stronger lo­cal sup­ply chains.

She not­ed that such an ap­proach echoed in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion poli­cies ad­vo­cat­ed by No­bel Prize-win­ning econ­o­mist Sir Arthur Lewis in the 1950s, un­der which for­eign in­vest­ment was used to de­vel­op do­mes­tic pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty, em­ploy­ment and lo­cal en­ter­prise.

On whether the project rep­re­sents gen­uine eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Attzs said T&T al­ready has a long his­to­ry of steel pro­duc­tion through IS­COTT and Arcelor­Mit­tal.

She said the in­clu­sion of vana­di­um could po­ten­tial­ly broad­en the coun­try’s in­dus­tri­al base and ex­port mix, al­though it would not rep­re­sent a com­plete de­par­ture from T&T’s tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy de­pen­dence.

Attzs al­so cau­tioned that the project is ex­pect­ed to be restart­ed in phas­es and that its full eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial will de­pend on re­li­able and com­pet­i­tive­ly priced nat­ur­al gas, as well as suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion over time.

Be­yond di­rect em­ploy­ment, she said the in­vest­ment could gen­er­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties across con­struc­tion, en­gi­neer­ing, lo­gis­tics, main­te­nance, trans­porta­tion, ICT and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

“The fo­cus now should be on en­sur­ing that lo­cal firms, work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties are po­si­tioned to max­imise the long-term ben­e­fits,” Attzs said.