Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Es­tab­lish­ing a more com­pet­i­tive cul­ture in the T&T and the Caribbean can have an im­mense im­pact on the econ­o­my.

This is the con­tention of the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Cari­com Com­pe­ti­tion Com­mis­sion (CCC), Nievia Ram­sun­dar.

Speak­ing re­cent­ly at a Com­pe­ti­tion Law and Merg­er Pol­i­cy Work­shop, Ram­sun­dar not­ed that fos­ter­ing a com­pet­i­tive cul­ture will “bring a turn around in the econ­o­my.”

Ram­sun­dar said a cul­ture of com­pe­ti­tion would gen­er­ate “more mon­ey, more rev­enue, more prof­it and more spend­ing choic­es on the part of the con­sumer.” She added that it will al­so cre­ate a re­gion­al im­pact as it will make com­pa­nies stronger in their stance against com­pet­i­tive forces.

In or­der to fos­ter a cul­ture of com­pe­ti­tion in the Caribbean, it is not enough to ed­u­cate adults, the youth must al­so be ed­u­cat­ed.

Un­der the treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, the CCC’s man­date is to ed­u­cate and spread as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble on com­pe­ti­tion law and pol­i­cy.

Ram­sun­dar said: “Thus far we’ve kept it at a very high lev­el, with of­fi­cers, trade min­istries and at this junc­ture, we are try­ing to build a com­pe­ti­tion and con­sumer cul­ture from the bot­tom-up.”

How­ev­er, the best way to do that is to in­tro­duce con­cepts of com­pe­ti­tion to teach “sec­ondary school stu­dents when they are now learn­ing the con­cepts of eco­nom­ics and ba­sic com­pe­ti­tion and trade law,” said Ram­sun­dar.

This is why the CCC has es­tab­lished a com­pe­ti­tion that is the first of it kind in the re­gion, where stu­dents be­tween the ages 12 and 19, can win up to US $1000 US for ob­tain­ing first place.

Ram­sun­dar ex­plained the CCC’s man­date and how it seeks to help all fair trad­ing au­thor­i­ties in the re­gion to es­tab­lish their own au­thor­i­ty as T&T, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos have done.

She said: “In or­der to have a work­ing trade sys­tem and eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion, you need to have a sup­port­ing body of pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion for com­pe­ti­tion that would sup­port fair trade.”

One of the CCC’s main mech­a­nisms of do­ing this, said Ram­sun­dar, in­volves the sup­port mem­ber states to es­tab­lish har­monised pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion. This is so “every­where you go in the com­mu­ni­ty you will have the same set of rules that all busi­ness­es places can ad­here to,” said Ram­sun­dar.

The CCC is al­so re­vis­it­ing its man­date to fa­cil­i­tate mem­ber states that are un­able to es­tab­lish their own au­thor­i­ty. Ram­sun­dar not­ed that the or­ga­ni­za­tion is con­sid­er­ing the in­clu­sion of “a na­tion­al man­date for those mem­ber states that are un­able to es­tab­lish a prop­er body of law and fund of­fi­cers to do that.”