On Tues­day, San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al (SRI) signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty’s (FIU) Chap­lin School of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty & Tourism Man­age­ment to cre­ate the Gor­don “Butch” Stew­art In­ter­na­tion­al School of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty & Tourism.

The new school will be built at the West­ern Ja­maica Cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona in the tourism cap­i­tal of Mon­tego Bay, the birth­place of the San­dals brand.

SRI’s Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man, Adam Stew­art, said, “Cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty through ed­u­ca­tion is fun­da­men­tal to our or­gan­i­sa­tion and to the suc­cess­ful fu­ture of the Caribbean, as it is to all peo­ple seek­ing a bet­ter life for them­selves and their fam­i­lies...This is tru­ly, a dream come true.”

He al­so spoke of the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of tourism for Caribbean economies, say­ing, “Tourism is the sin­gle most pow­er­ful in­dus­try across the Caribbean and its abil­i­ty to con­nect with and im­pact wider in­dus­tries and sub­se­quent­ly Caribbean economies is of­ten un­der-ap­pre­ci­at­ed. This part­ner­ship and this school is an ob­vi­ous in­vest­ment in the ed­u­ca­tion of Caribbean peo­ple but be­yond that it is al­so an in­vest­ment in Caribbean tourism and the many oth­er crit­i­cal in­dus­tries that we sup­port.”

Nowhere in the re­gion is tourism more un­der-es­ti­mat­ed than in T&T. Blessed as we have been by oil and lat­er gas that has pro­vid­ed so much rev­enue to this coun­try and al­lowed us to have a stan­dard of liv­ing that is bet­ter than most of the Eng­lish Speak­ing Caribbean.

I have said it many times, T&T is not a poor coun­try. Our prob­lem has been the in­ef­fi­cient spend of our re­sources, the col­lapse of in­sti­tu­tions that en­cour­ages cor­rup­tion to get things done, the lack of suf­fi­cient pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the de­pen­dence on the state for sup­port and the most de­bil­i­tat­ing of them all, a sense that this wealth will be self-per­pet­u­at­ing.

The day is com­ing soon when we will see the world mov­ing un­re­lent­ing­ly to end in­vest­ment in fos­sil fu­el and an end to the ma­jor rev­enue source of the coun­try.

It is in this con­text that I wish to con­grat­u­late two min­is­ters in this gov­ern­ment who against the odds seem to be get­ting things done. The first is the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture.

Let me say for the sake of trans­paren­cy I have known Clarence Ramb­harat since we were boys in Rio Claro. We grew up in the same vil­lage, he went to Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege and I QRC, we played small goal to­geth­er and in ret­ro­spect, even then, we of­ten talked about what we felt were the ma­jor is­sues in the coun­try.

Ramb­harat has been able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce, though not elim­i­nate the se­ri­ous chal­lenges fac­ing farm­ers, that of land tenure. A lawyer by pro­fes­sion, I am sure it is one of the things that he would have found un­ac­cept­able and tak­en it as a project to do in the min­istry.

Land tenure to farm­ers is im­por­tant as it al­lows for many things in­clud­ing ac­cess to gov­ern­ment grants and ADB fund­ing. This can then help in in­creas­ing in­vest­ment in the sec­tor and hope­ful­ly im­proved yields. Ramb­harat has al­so be­gun the process of bring­ing much need­ed pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment back in­to agri­cul­ture. The failed gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in all as­pects of the econ­o­my is well known, from Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed to Petrotrin. I am clear in my mind that gov­ern­ment needs to stay out of op­er­at­ing state-owned en­ter­pris­es and even if it makes the ini­tial in­vest­ment it should al­low for the com­pa­nies to op­er­ate with­out gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment and con­trol. The ev­i­dence is clear, look at the suc­cess of First Cit­i­zens, the suc­cess of Trin­gen and the ear­ly signs of Her­itage. Com­pare that to what the NGC has be­come and the myr­i­ad of failed state-owned en­ter­pris­es, and well, you get the pic­ture.

In prais­ing the work of Ramb­harat and Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell it can­not be ig­nored that they both suf­fer from a lack of an over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy for the agri­cul­ture and tourism sec­tors. To be sure they have had in­di­vid­ual suc­cess­es, but in keep­ing true to form with the ap­proach by this gov­ern­ment, they seem to feel that the cit­i­zens do not need to know where they want to take our econ­o­my and how to get there. In short, they do not ar­tic­u­late a re­al strat­e­gy go­ing for­ward.

For Mitchell’s part, he re­cent­ly told the Par­lia­ment of a plan to add sev­er­al events to the tourism cal­en­dar and de­vel­op them.

Be­ing the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Arts and Cul­ture, I wrote in this very space last year that it was per­haps the on­ly in­no­v­a­tive ap­point­ment that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made in his new Cab­i­net.

Like Ramb­harat, Mitchell has gone about his work qui­et­ly, suc­ceed­ing where Row­ley failed by bring­ing a ma­jor re­sort to To­ba­go and not try­ing to be in the me­dia all day like the Min­is­ter of every­thing, full of sound and fury.

Mitchell re­cent­ly told the Par­lia­ment that in the June/Ju­ly months the min­istry be­lieves there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing as a fes­ti­val, the num­ber of band launch­es that oc­cur dur­ing the pe­ri­od in­to a band launch sea­son oc­cur­ring over the space of two week­ends which, as we know a band launch takes the form of a mod­el run­way, with cos­tume de­signs, mod­els and de­sign­ers dur­ing a pre­mi­um fete.

He told the Up­per House that fol­low­ing the band-launch ini­tia­tive the Tourism Min­istry sees the pos­si­bil­i­ty of at­tract­ing vis­i­tors who could not make it to Car­ni­val in a fes­ti­val of fetes.

“And to­wards the end of Au­gust, we en­vi­sion an­oth­er fes­ti­val that cel­e­brates our dis­tinct cre­ative cul­ture and how we have been able to in­no­vate our host­ing of events over the past years. With these new fes­ti­vals, we see the cre­ation of eco­nom­ic val­ue for our cul­tur­al work­ers, our artistes, pro­mot­ers, mu­si­cians and their abil­i­ty to earn. As well as all the ser­vice providers,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who al­so has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the arts and the cre­ative sec­tor, not­ed that the can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val 2021 was a ma­jor hit to the econ­o­my. He point­ed out that Car­ni­val alone ac­counts for 10 per cent of the coun­try’s to­tal vis­i­tors and al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars in di­rect spend from vis­i­tors, not to men­tion the over­all spend.

“There is no deny­ing the vast eco­nom­ic im­pact for suc­cess­ful fes­ti­vals. Car­ni­val alone, the di­rect eco­nom­ic val­ue for vis­i­tor spend is around $450 mil­lion. And this is just count­ing the 10 days lead­ing up to Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day. And of course, the ben­e­fits are enor­mous when you con­sid­er all the stake­hold­ers who earn from this fes­ti­val­—the pro­mot­ers, the artistes, the ser­vice providers, mas mak­ers, mu­si­cians, ven­dors and taxi dri­vers,” he not­ed.

The re­al­i­ty is that be­fore this year there was even sug­ges­tion from some that Car­ni­val was a waste of tax­pay­ers mon­ey, not un­der­stand­ing that the gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in the fes­ti­val was a pit­tance com­pared to the im­pact it has on the econ­o­my and the wide range of ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

What we can ar­gue is whether there is a charge and col­lec­tion of VAT for ex­am­ple on cos­tumes or tax­es paid by ma­jor fete pro­mot­ers and event or­gan­is­ers?

The time has come for us to see tourism for what it is. A ma­jor eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty for the peo­ple of T&T. It has the po­ten­tial to be a ma­jor job cre­ator, to cre­ate wealth and earn for­eign ex­change. Let us look at oth­er is­lands, let us look at the USA and Eu­rope how they are able to earn mon­ey from their sites and at­trac­tions and pay for their up­keep.

Maybe if we are earn­ing more from tourism then there will be less pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment to spend every cent we earn from oil and gas and bor­row on fu­ture earn­ings. Just maybe we can build a more sus­tain­able econ­o­my.

Ramb­harat and Mitchell, per­haps your col­leagues just may take a page from your book and per­form. Just maybe!