by Mar­i­ano Browne

The de­feat of the PNM in 1986 cre­at­ed a wa­ter­shed with long-last­ing reper­cus­sions on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment. The PNM over­saw the cre­ation and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment plans for an un­bro­ken 30-year pe­ri­od start­ing with self-gov­ern­ment in 1956 un­til that elec­toral land­slide. Since 1986 there have been sev­er­al changes of gov­ern­ment with many new ad­min­is­tra­tions adopt­ing their par­ty man­i­festo as gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. The re­sult has been chang­ing pri­or­i­ties, a less than op­ti­mal ap­proach to the task of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Dur­ing the PNM’s 30 years of un­bro­ken con­trol over the gov­ern­ment, the in­stru­ment used to co­or­di­nate and struc­ture the frame­work for a sus­tain­able in­de­pen­dent coun­try were a se­ries of five-year de­vel­op­ment plans. The ob­jec­tives were clear and the poli­cies to achieve those ob­jec­tives were con­sis­tent. The pri­ma­ry pur­pose was to build a sus­tain­able fu­ture with the eco­nom­ic struc­tures to sup­port this ap­proach, a shift away from ex­port agri­cul­ture to new in­dus­tries be­hind a tar­iff wall. The poli­cies used were loose­ly la­belled “In­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion by In­vi­ta­tion” based on the Sir Arthur Lewis Mod­el of de­vel­op­ment.

Ad­her­ence to this ap­proach re­quired an im­proved and ex­pand­ed ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to pro­vide the trained peo­ple to fill the jobs cre­at­ed by the new sec­tors. The tar­get was to in­crease the num­ber of sec­ondary school places from 5,000 to 25,000. Sim­i­lar­ly, the fi­nan­cial sys­tem had to be re­ori­ent­ed to pro­vide the fi­nance re­quired to fund new de­vel­op­ment and in­dus­tries. This led to the pol­i­cy of fi­nan­cial sec­tor do­mes­ti­ca­tion through the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal­ly owned fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions. To fi­nance a more proac­tive na­tion­al gov­ern­ment, a new tax sys­tem had to be built.

Key foun­da­tions for these changes were the Con­cor­dat, the agree­ment be­tween the gov­ern­ment and de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools, the Aid to Pi­o­neer In­dus­tries Act, the Pe­tro­le­um Tax­es Act and the 1966 Fi­nance Act. The 1966 Fi­nance Act pi­lot­ed by then Fi­nance Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son was un­pop­u­lar but ground­break­ing. This frame­work an­tic­i­pat­ed us­ing nat­ur­al gas to de­vel­op in­dus­tri­al ca­pac­i­ty. The first ef­forts in this di­rec­tion were the use of nat­ur­al gas to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty and the es­tab­lish­ment of Fed­er­a­tion Chem­i­cals on the fringe of what is now the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. The dis­cov­er­ies of oil and nat­ur­al gas by Amo­co on the east coast in 1971 and the surge in oil prices in 1974 cre­at­ed a pe­ri­od of ac­cel­er­at­ed ex­pan­sion. The en­su­ing boom led to rapid growth in the na­tion­al in­come and with it an ex­pan­sion in the num­ber and size of gov­ern­ment projects.

In the 36 years since 1986, on­ly this cur­rent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­pears ca­pa­ble of com­plet­ing two full terms, (though this state­ment may be pre­ma­ture as it has two years to com­plete its cur­rent term). Gov­ern­ments need two terms in of­fice to ce­ment poli­cies and to ef­fect mean­ing­ful change. Be­cause of the rapid turnover of ad­min­is­tra­tions post 1986, pol­i­cy changes and in­con­sis­ten­cies have be­come the norm.

The NAR be­gan a pe­ri­od of con­sol­i­da­tion and pri­vati­sa­tion of state en­ter­pris­es and struc­tur­al changes in the tax­a­tion sys­tem with the in­tro­duc­tion of VAT and by con­sol­i­dat­ing per­son­al al­lowances with low­er tax rates. How­ev­er, 31 years lat­er, the ad­min­is­tra­tive im­prove­ments which were meant to lead to the cre­ation of a Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty re­main out­stand­ing. It al­so dis­man­tled the pro­tec­tion sys­tem built on the neg­a­tive list and lib­er­alised trade. But de­spite in­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion and oth­er de­vices, var­i­ous re­ports sug­gest cor­rup­tion, and ease of do­ing mea­sures re­main weak demon­strat­ing lit­tle progress, whilst our Cari­com neigh­bours show steady im­prove­ment.

In crit­i­cal ar­eas such as ed­u­ca­tion, in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, the fre­quent changes of gov­ern­ment have af­fect­ed the rate of progress and high­light the need for a stronger, more pro­fes­sion­al pub­lic ser­vice.

The num­ber of state en­ter­pris­es used to ef­fect pub­lic pol­i­cy have ex­pand­ed rather than con­tract­ed. There have been the oc­ca­sion­al pri­vati­sa­tion ef­forts caused by the gov­ern­ment’s bud­getary short­falls rather than any com­mit­ment to lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in pri­vate sec­tor pur­suits. The liq­ui­da­tion of Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Lim­it­ed, the ex­e­cu­tion arm of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry needs some ex­pla­na­tion.

The es­tab­lish­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort to de­vel­op tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing in the ser­vice of in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment by one ad­min­is­tra­tion. UTT’s mix of prac­ti­cal hands-on train­ing con­trasts sharply with the aca­d­e­m­ic ap­proach adopt­ed by UWI. De­vel­oped to ad­dress the prac­ti­cal re­quire­ments of the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, UTT suf­fered a sharp cut in fi­nanc­ing when ad­min­is­tra­tions changed.

The same fate be­fell the long-await­ed alu­mini­um smelter which had re­al ca­pac­i­ty to deep­en the Cari­com in­te­gra­tion process by us­ing raw ma­te­ri­als from the re­source-rich Guyana and Suri­name. Vi­sion 2020 and Vi­sion 2030 have fall­en on po­lit­i­cal­ly stony ground for the sim­i­lar rea­sons.

Po­lit­i­cal man­i­festos are mar­ket­ing state­ments to get vot­ers’ at­ten­tion and sup­port. They are not cal­i­brat­ed to achieve the ef­fi­cient de­ploy­ment of na­tion­al re­sources or a con­sis­tent ap­proach to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. When an in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion adopts its man­i­festo as of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, it takes promi­nence over na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plans, and cre­ates the op­por­tu­ni­ty to give the ap­pear­ance of suc­cess. How­ev­er, that in­vari­ably leads to short-sight­ed plan­ning ob­jec­tives and in­ef­fec­tive na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals. Build­ing a sus­tain­able fu­ture re­quires a plan longer than five years and the ma­tu­ri­ty to put the coun­try first.