Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James says the new­ly reap­proved li­cence for the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry will not make a re­al dif­fer­ence to To­ba­go’s econ­o­my un­less the is­land starts pro­duc­ing val­ue-added prod­ucts.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the ap­proval dur­ing her of­fi­cial vis­it to To­ba­go on Mon­day. She de­scribed it as one of sev­er­al “gifts” to help the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly earn its own rev­enue and re­duce its de­pen­dence on cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

But Dr James told Guardian Me­dia the li­cence is not new and has done lit­tle to change the is­land’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in the past.

“We’ve been try­ing to make some­thing of the an­desite de­posits for a long time. Since 1997, it has not made much dif­fer­ence to the To­ba­go econ­o­my, and I doubt it will now,” he said.

Dr James ex­plained that sim­ply ex­port­ing the raw ma­te­r­i­al will not gen­er­ate jobs or for­eign ex­change. He said To­ba­go needs to de­vel­op in­dus­tries that use the quar­ry’s ma­te­ri­als to pro­duce goods with high­er val­ue.

“Un­til we start pro­duc­ing de­riv­a­tive prod­ucts that lead to in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land, it will not make a dif­fer­ence,” he said.

He added that the quar­ry is­sue is a “side mat­ter” com­pared to To­ba­go’s re­al chal­lenge, which is build­ing a more di­ver­si­fied and pro­duc­tive econ­o­my.

The Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the li­cence along with oth­er mea­sures, in­clud­ing plans for greater fis­cal au­ton­o­my and a lo­calised po­lice unit, dur­ing her one-day vis­it to the is­land on Tues­day.