Much has been said and writ­ten al­ready about the re­port­ed de­ci­sion by In­di­an busi­ness­man and politi­cian Naveen Jin­dal to with­draw from the lat­est at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to sell the moth­balled Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

In a re­cent po­lit­i­cal event, the Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, read parts of a let­ter Mr Jin­dal wrote to him to ex­plain his de­ci­sion, which seemed to have been heav­i­ly based on the Op­po­si­tion’s ques­tions about his in­volve­ment.

Maybe he re­al­ly means it, but, as Mr Jin­dal is not on­ly a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man but al­so an MP in In­dia’s low­er house, it is very like­ly that his let­ter came cov­ered by a good dol­lop of pol­i­tick­ing at­tached to it.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ments may have el­e­ments of what in some po­lit­i­cal cir­cles is known as the dead cat when a dead cat (fig­u­ra­tive­ly speak­ing) is thrown on the road to dis­tract peo­ple from what is re­al­ly im­por­tant. That is be­cause what is re­al­ly im­por­tant is T&T’s neg­a­tive ap­proach to­wards for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment—a cru­cial source of mon­ey for any coun­try, even the rich­est economies in the world (the Unit­ed States reg­u­lar­ly tops the world league when it comes to at­tract­ing in­vest­ments).

This ap­proach to­wards FDI may have from the com­bi­na­tion of an un­der­stand­able sus­pi­cion of for­eign in­ter­fer­ence fol­low­ing cen­turies of colo­nial rule and a de­gree of ar­ro­gance, giv­en that those in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing in our oil and gas in­dus­try had to come here un­der whichev­er terms were of­fered, or else.

The prob­lem now is that, with pro­jec­tions of a di­min­ished hy­dro­car­bons glob­al mar­ket and an ever-grow­ing num­ber of oil and gas pro­duc­ers world­wide (just look at Guyana), in­vestors can more eas­i­ly go for the ‘or else’ op­tion and put their mon­ey else­where.

So, with or with­out Mr Jin­dal, we need to change our cul­ture and our ap­proach to­wards for­eign mon­ey and cre­ate the right con­di­tions to wel­come much-need­ed new in­vest­ments, es­pe­cial­ly in new sec­tors such as the dig­i­tal econ­o­my. And how do we do that?

First, let’s change the tune. Yes, we need to make sure the right kind of FDI comes our way, as we don’t need spec­u­la­tive (and short-term) in­ward flows or ques­tion­able sources (We al­ready have our un­fair share of the un­der­world’s mon­ey flow­ing in­to our econ­o­my through drugs, weapons, con­tra­band and hu­man traf­fick­ing.)

But hav­ing red lines about the kind of in­vest­ments we need and want doesn’t equal be­ing hos­tile to­wards for­eign in­vestors—quite the op­po­site. If we are to at­tract those much-need­ed in­vestors, show­ing more warmth and less hos­til­i­ty to­wards them is a great first step.

Then, we need to work much hard­er to cre­ate the con­di­tions that pro­vide the kind of sta­bil­i­ty and safe­ty that for­eign in­vestors nat­u­ral­ly look for. So, tack­ling things like vi­o­lent crime, cor­rup­tion, bu­reau­cra­cy, and poor ser­vices (es­pe­cial­ly through the pub­lic sec­tor) is not just crit­i­cal for us all but al­so key to pro­vid­ing the right en­vi­ron­ment for in­vest­ment in our econ­o­my.

Third­ly, we need a bet­ter and more mod­ern em­ploy­ment cul­ture backed by equal­ly mod­ern leg­is­la­tion. As long as we con­tin­ue with the tox­ic and ag­gres­sive in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cul­ture that caus­es dam­age to em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee di­a­logue, and as long as we con­tin­ue with em­ploy­ment laws de­signed for the last cen­tu­ry, our com­pet­i­tive­ness will re­main se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. To put it sim­ply, why would a new busi­ness want to set it­self up here, hav­ing to face hos­tile labour re­la­tions and out­dat­ed em­ploy­ment laws if it can go some­where bet­ter?

And, fi­nal­ly, we need to de­vel­op the right mix of train­ing for those al­ready at work, to­geth­er with the right ed­u­ca­tion for those still at school, so that cur­rent and fu­ture work­ers have the right skills for the mod­ern world, not the wrong skills for last cen­tu­ry’s jobs.

None of this means that we need to join the race to the bot­tom in terms of pay, terms and con­di­tions, or le­gal pro­tec­tions, as this is not about turn­ing T&T in­to a dig­i­tal sweat­shop. With the right cul­ture, the right work eth­ic, the right skills, and the right at­ti­tude, we can com­pete against the best in the world. Let’s just re­mem­ber that some of the biggest and most suc­cess­ful tech com­pa­nies are based in Cal­i­for­nia, where gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions are tight and costs are high, in­clud­ing salaries.

They are there be­cause the over­all con­di­tions are good for busi­ness and em­ploy­ees (be­gin­ning with per­son­al safe­ty), skilled labour is avail­able, and lo­cal leg­is­la­tion pro­vides the kind of flex­i­bil­i­ty and in­vest­ment frame­work com­pa­nies can bet on.

And the cre­ation of such en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment, is not just great for the much-need­ed for­eign in­vest­ments we re­quire. It is al­so great to al­low our own busi­ness­es to grow here and be­yond, thus al­so play­ing an equal­ly im­por­tant role in terms of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and eco­nom­ic growth.

Of course, it would be great to see the re­fin­ery op­er­at­ing again if, in­deed, that makes busi­ness and eco­nom­ic sense (the ju­ry is still out on that). But this is the least of our prob­lems when it comes to growth and the fu­ture of our econ­o­my. If we fo­cus on the re­al is­sues, like skills, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cul­ture, em­ploy­ment leg­is­la­tion, crime re­duc­tion, and bet­ter gov­er­nance, we will have a much bet­ter chance to thrive.

And, if we do, let­ters such as Mr Jin­dal’s will be no more than just part of the po­lit­i­cal the­atre of our democ­ra­cy, with lit­tle or no im­pact on how we go about gen­er­at­ing jobs and mak­ing T&T a bet­ter place for all.