Raphael John-Lall

An econ­o­mist and a busi­ness leader agree that while they wel­come Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sup­port for “cap­i­tal­ism” and free en­ter­prise, this must be fol­lowed up by poli­cies that sup­port the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it clear that she be­lieves that “cap­i­tal­ism” and pro-busi­ness poli­cies are the best way to cre­ate wealth and bring pros­per­i­ty.

Speak­ing at the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis in Feb­ru­ary, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said “We want to live here in our Cari­com re­gion un­der democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism.”

Two weeks ago, in an in­ter­view with a lo­cal dai­ly news­pa­per, she al­so re­peat­ed the same thing say­ing she sup­ports the vi­sion of the “con­ser­vatism and cap­i­tal­ism” of the Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

An ar­ti­cle on the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) web­site, au­thored by econ­o­mists Sar­wat Ja­han and Saber Mah­mud states: “Cap­i­tal­ism is of­ten thought of as an eco­nom­ic sys­tem in which pri­vate ac­tors own and con­trol prop­er­ty in ac­cord with their in­ter­ests, and de­mand and sup­ply freely set prices in mar­kets in a way that can serve the best in­ter­ests of so­ci­ety.”

They con­clud­ed that while it may not be per­fect, it is the best way to or­gan­ise an econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, grow­ing in­equal­i­ty around the world has giv­en rise to more crit­ics of the glob­al cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and mar­ket-dri­ven economies.

Even in the Unit­ed States, the world’s largest econ­o­my, in­equal­i­ty and ris­ing pover­ty have led Amer­i­cans to ques­tion their eco­nom­ic sys­tem.

A Gallup poll car­ried out in 2025 showed that there was a drop in Amer­i­cans who viewed cap­i­tal­ism pos­i­tive­ly from 60 per­cent in 2021 to 54 per­cent in 2025.

In Britain, the coun­try which led the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, peo­ple’s per­cep­tion of a cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic sys­tem is just as neg­a­tive.

Based on a YouGov sur­vey pub­lished in De­cem­ber 2024, cap­i­tal­ism is viewed favourably by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent of Britons, while a larg­er seg­ment (44-45 per­cent) view it un­favourably.

With­in the lo­cal con­text, T&T’s econ­o­my is char­ac­terised by a mixed econ­o­my where the state is in­volved in the en­er­gy sec­tor, util­i­ties like wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty, health and ed­u­ca­tion while the pri­vate sec­tor is in­volved in en­er­gy, fi­nance, bank­ing, re­tail and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Both sec­tors em­ploy sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­ages of the labour force.

The SME sec­tor alone con­tributes to 30 per cent of the coun­try’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) em­ploy­ing al­most 200,000 peo­ple in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Ca­reers Por­tal of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go em­ploys over 120,000 em­ploy­ees.

T&T’S mixed econ­o­my

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that he is not sure what the Prime Min­is­ter had in mind when she made that state­ment on con­ser­vatism and cap­i­tal­ism, but for a small de­vel­op­ing econ­o­my like T&T, pol­i­cy­mak­ers should con­cen­trate on what prac­ti­cal sys­tem de­liv­ers the best re­sults.

“One can speak of state cap­i­tal­ism and of pri­vate cap­i­tal­ism and there is suf­fi­cient qual­i­ty lit­er­a­ture to rec­om­mend note­wor­thy qual­i­fi­ca­tions to these two ‘isms.’ In any case, in my view, for small economies es­pe­cial­ly, rather than get caught up in ide­ol­o­gy and the ‘isms’, I be­lieve that we should fo­cus more on what arrange­ment works best in de­liv­er­ing goods and ser­vices to con­sumers at rea­son­able prices and at the same time pro­motes so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”

In this con­text, he said he can agree that the state has bit­ten off more than it can chew in de­liv­er­ing goods and ser­vices to the pop­u­la­tion. That means the state should move away from the parts of the econ­o­my where it does not add val­ue, said Ramkissoon.

“As we say, gov­ern­ment should di­vest it­self of some state as­sets no doubt. This should al­low it to do much bet­ter in the pro­vi­sion of the things for which gov­ern­ments are pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble, such as en­abling in­fra­struc­ture in­clud­ing ICT, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, roads, health etc.”

Ramkissoon al­so said cap­i­tal­ism or so-called free en­ter­prise has its lim­i­ta­tions es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion and mar­ket en­try of new busi­ness­es of any size, but more es­pe­cial­ly SMEs.

“Ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion needs to be seen as an im­por­tant as­pect of what I pre­fer to call a mar­ket econ­o­my. As for SMEs, Gov­ern­ment can be help­ful in some ar­eas such as in the pro­vi­sion of ac­cess to fi­nance with the as­sis­tance of fi­nanciers and ac­coun­tants for ex­am­ple.”

He ad­vo­cat­ed a mixed econ­o­my where both the state and the pri­vate sec­tor make their con­tri­bu­tion but qual­i­fied that by say­ing it must gen­er­ate re­sults.

“Yes, I be­lieve that this is a use­ful ap­proach as there is an im­por­tant role for the state in so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, I has­ten to add that the ap­proach to eco­nom­ic man­age­ment and struc­ture must be dy­nam­ic rather than sta­t­ic. Con­di­tions are chang­ing all the time, ex­ter­nal­ly and in­ter­nal­ly and gov­ern­ments must un­der­stand that there might be times to in­ter­vene and times to pull back. Just as im­por­tant, the Gov­ern­ment must have a vi­sion and a plan to achieve that vi­sion. There will al­ways be a role for the state.”

SME sec­tor

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh told the Busi­ness Guardian that he wel­comes the Prime Min­is­ter’s clear de­c­la­ra­tion of sup­port of cap­i­tal­ism and free en­ter­prise.

“For the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, this sig­nals recog­ni­tion that the pri­vate sec­tor and SMEs are crit­i­cal dri­vers of em­ploy­ment, in­vest­ment, and eco­nom­ic growth in Trinidad and To­ba­go. How­ev­er, sup­port for busi­ness must go be­yond state­ments. While there have been pos­i­tive signs over the past year, many SMEs con­tin­ue to face se­ri­ous chal­lenges in­clud­ing for­eign ex­change short­ages, ris­ing op­er­a­tional costs and bank­ing fees and crime.”

He point­ed out that the SME sec­tor em­ploys over 200,000 peo­ple and con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the econ­o­my, so stronger and more tar­get­ed sup­port is need­ed.

“We must im­prove our world rank­ing on the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness. This in­cludes af­ford­able ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, re­duc­ing bu­reau­cra­cy, en­hanc­ing se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty in busi­ness dis­tricts, and cre­at­ing a more ef­fi­cient en­vi­ron­ment for in­vest­ment and ex­pan­sion,” said Singh.

Di­vest­ment of state com­pa­nies

Di­vest­ment of state-owned en­ter­pris­es (SOEs) usu­al­ly in­volves a gov­ern­ment sell­ing eq­ui­ty, as­sets or sub­sidiaries to pri­vate in­vestors to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, re­duce fis­cal bur­den, and fos­ter com­pe­ti­tion.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, for­mer Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Dr Bhoe Tewarie agreed with the Prime Min­ster’s pro-busi­ness stance and said that the tax­pay­ers should not be sub­si­dis­ing loss-mak­ing com­pa­nies.

“Let state com­pa­nies be dri­ven by the prof­it mo­tive, and let us get po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence out of com­pa­nies that need to be ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive, com­pet­i­tive. We should not get too hung up on ide­ol­o­gy. John Ken­neth Gal­braith said in the 1960s that it does not re­al­ly mat­ter if a com­pa­ny is pub­licly or pri­vate­ly owned.

“But he iden­ti­fied two is­sues that are crit­i­cal. A busi­ness, whether pub­lic or pri­vate, must be run ac­cord­ing to busi­ness prin­ci­ples, he said. And the first busi­ness prin­ci­ple is that a busi­ness must make a prof­it. The sec­ond prin­ci­ple is that there must be no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence on busi­ness de­ci­sion mak­ing in the com­pa­ny.”

Tewarie al­so said that a strong busi­ness sec­tor is im­por­tant as this is the sec­tor that will dri­ve non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

“When en­er­gy fails there is no pri­vate sec­tor ca­pac­i­ty to dri­ve ex­port earn­ings. We need to re­duce the state which is too large and bur­den­some on tax­pay­ers, make the coun­try more busi­ness friend­ly, by mak­ing it easy to start a busi­ness, by at­tract­ing forex earn­ing ex­port in­vestors from the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.”

At the same time, Tewarie ad­vo­cat­ed for “strong state” in strate­gic sec­tors but not­ed that the state “should not be in every­thing.”

“Sin­ga­pore has a strong state, but the pri­vate sec­tor is big. Chi­na is state pow­er man­i­fest, yet Chi­na would not be able to com­pete in the world with­out the pri­vate sec­tor. The pri­vate sec­tor leads the tourism in­dus­try in Cos­ta Ri­ca.”