The Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en se­ri­ous steps to im­ple­ment some of the pro­pos­als in the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery doc­u­ment.

This is the view of for­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, who was al­so a for­mer prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James. Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, who was part of the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery sub­com­mit­tee, al­so felt that not much progress has been made in im­ple­ment­ing the ob­jec­tives of the re­port put for­ward a year ago.

Mean­while, econ­o­mist Dr Daren Con­rad said that while no progress was made in the im­ple­men­ta­tion, we have to put it in­to con­text, that re­sources had to be di­vert­ed.

One year, he al­so said, is too short for the Gov­ern­ment to have made any sig­nif­i­cant steps in im­ple­ment­ing the pro­pos­als.

The Gov­ern­ment in its Roadmap to Re­cov­ery plan in 2020 promised to pro­vide so­cial as­sis­tance to those hard­est hit by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and take steps to in­crease food pro­duc­tion, boost ag­gre­gate de­mand and di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my among oth­er plans.

One year lat­er, the Min­istry of Plan­ning, man­dat­ed to ex­e­cute the de­liv­ery of the ob­jec­tives said that it has tak­en steps to achieve the goals set.

Some of the things the min­istry said that they have achieved so far by fol­low­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­port was a $1 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to as­sist in greater food pro­duc­tion, VAT re­funds and mil­lions in loans to busi­ness­es through­out the coun­try. The min­istry fur­ther stat­ed that de­spite low­er rev­enues, the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to pay pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ee salaries and have been en­cour­ag­ing them to work re­mote­ly in an at­tempt to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

Tewarie: Get busi­ness­es back on their feet, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion crit­i­cal

Tewarie be­lieves that the ma­jor pri­or­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment should be get­ting busi­ness­es back on their feet so that they can sur­vive post-pan­dem­ic.

"The first thing is to get those busi­ness­es that have sur­vived the pan­dem­ic on their feet. It re­quires some sort of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor. The loans for the small busi­ness sec­tor are not ad­e­quate. All they do is post­pone the in­ter­est pay­ment which ac­cu­mu­lates at the end of the pe­ri­od. It doesn't give any breath­ing room to the busi­ness­man."

The sec­ond pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment must be fi­nanc­ing a large-scale di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­fort in T&T. To do this, the Gov­ern­ment needs to make the coun­try more at­trac­tive for for­eign in­vest­ment.

"This means deal­ing with the abysmal con­di­tions of the ease of do­ing busi­ness, where we have fall­en every year since 2015. We are now at po­si­tion 105 in the world and by do­ing that to ad­dress the is­sues of com­pet­i­tive­ness and in­no­va­tion. Al­so, in­vest­ment for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of pro­duc­tion, ex­port mar­kets and im­port sub­sti­tu­tion ac­tiv­i­ty," Tewarie said.

"How­ev­er, I don’t see the Gov­ern­ment ac­tive in these ar­eas as it’s al­most as if eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is sep­a­rate from in­ter­ven­tions in the health sec­tor. The two are di­rect­ly re­lat­ed."

Tewarie said the Gov­ern­ment's fo­cus must al­so be how T&T bor­rows on the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets so that the coun­try would have new fi­nanc­ing for fu­ture de­vel­op­men­tal plan.

He al­so said that the coun­try needs to have a prop­er "dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion plan" to deal with the de­liv­ery of gov­ern­ment ser­vices post-pan­dem­ic.

Tewarie al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to do more to se­cure T&T's bor­der and to seek grants abroad to as­sist the Venezue­lan mi­grants in T&T as the Gov­ern­ment does not have suf­fi­cient re­sources now.

The open­ing up of the air­port will be a big step to give the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­fi­dence, he said. How­ev­er, he added that this will on­ly hap­pen if enough peo­ple are vac­ci­nat­ed.

James: We must en­sure busi­ness­es can sur­vive, jobs saved

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James said that the Gov­ern­ment's pri­or­i­ty should be to en­sure that busi­ness­es can sur­vive the pan­dem­ic. In this way, peo­ple will have a job and there will be no need to re­ly on the Gov­ern­ment.

"The mech­a­nisms you need to sup­port work­ers is through their jobs in the pri­vate sec­tor. They have to build a re­la­tion­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor to al­low for the flow of re­sources to pre­serve the jobs of work­ers. Rather than have the work­ers di­rect­ly de­pen­dent on the Gov­ern­ment. They have to work with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to pre­serve the jobs peo­ple now have. This re­quires loan pack­ages and pro­grammes to raise pro­duc­tiv­i­ty."

He said rough­ly 40 to 45 per cent of the econ­o­my com­pris­es medi­um to larg­er en­ter­pris­es. There­fore, the Gov­ern­ment should of­fer sup­port not on­ly to SMEs but to all busi­ness­es as long as they need those grants.

Ramkissoon: Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, in­creas­ing agri pro­duc­tion should be the pri­or­i­ty

Ramkissoon be­lieves that the Gov­ern­ment’s main pri­or­i­ty mov­ing for­ward should be the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the econ­o­my and en­sur­ing that agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion should in­crease so that the coun­try can feed it­self.

Ramkissoon said eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment was a long process and it is not pos­si­ble to im­ple­ment some of the ideas out­lined in the re­port over the short term.

As part of the sub­com­mit­tee, he iden­ti­fied weak­ness­es in the econ­o­my that need to be strength­ened. He said they rec­om­mend­ed cer­tain ways to deal with the sit­u­a­tion. "Al­ready there were cer­tain shifts in the struc­ture of the econ­o­my in the sec­tors that were mov­ing ahead. We recog­nised that so­ci­ety need­ed to be much more dig­i­tal and IT-friend­ly. The de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices de­pends on a strong IT in­fra­struc­ture. Look at on­line ed­u­ca­tion and peo­ple work­ing from home."

Ramkissoon said he was not aware of every­thing that is hap­pen­ing in every sec­tor, and he hears about "bits and pieces" of things that are be­ing done, but in terms of a com­pre­hen­sive push for the Roadmap plan, he has not seen much so far.

"Maybe there are some things that are hap­pen­ing qui­et­ly. I do not know if this is so. What I do know is that we are con­tin­u­ing to fight this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. We are look­ing for vac­cines and there is promise in that area. We need to have more peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed. Our busi­ness­es have been closed for too long."

He said that COVID-19 showed up the struc­tur­al weak­ness­es in the econ­o­my.

"What COVID-19 has shown for us and the world is that sev­er­al of these ideas that we were think­ing of and we had in a re­port ten years ago, we were too slow to im­ple­ment. An ex­am­ple of this is not hav­ing ad­e­quate IT struc­tures to de­liv­er gov­ern­ment ser­vices."

Con­rad: One year not enough to make sig­nif­i­cant steps

Dr Con­rad, head of the Eco­nom­ics De­part­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), how­ev­er, said, “We have lim­it­ed re­sources and the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery plan re­quires some lev­el of in­vest­ments in the dif­fer­ent sec­tors. Giv­en the coun­try’s tight bud­get con­straints and giv­en the re­sources that were giv­en to ad­dress the fall­out, I would say that while no progress was made in the im­ple­men­ta­tion, we have to put it in­to con­text, in that re­sources had to be di­vert­ed.”

He said once peo­ple have been vac­ci­nat­ed and the coun­try re­turns to some state of nor­mal­cy, the au­thor­i­ties would at­tempt to im­ple­ment some of the short-term mea­sures.

One of the pil­lars that the re­port spoke about was help­ing the less for­tu­nate and the so­cial needs of the vul­ner­a­ble. How­ev­er, Con­rad said that there was a lack of struc­ture in terms of how so­cial pro­grammes are de­liv­ered in the coun­try.

"We have so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes which turn in­to state-fund­ed wel­fare pro­grammes with a view of in­di­vid­u­als that they are en­ti­tled to this on a long-term ba­sis. What is sup­posed to be so­cial de­vel­op­ment turns in­to so­cial wel­fare with no mean­ing­ful out­come. Look at how many years they have been do­ing trans­fers and sub­si­dies in the form of so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes rather than take on the ap­proach of so­cial de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes."

He said peo­ple are talk­ing about wel­fare cheques which are im­por­tant, but few peo­ple are talk­ing about how they in­tend to en­hance their skills for when the econ­o­my is ful­ly re-opened.

Con­rad be­lieves that what­ev­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty is in pow­er, there must be con­ti­nu­ity in the ob­jec­tives rec­om­mend­ed in the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery plan.

BOX

The com­mit­tee's man­date

A re­port laid in Par­lia­ment in Ju­ly 2020 stat­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had ap­point­ed a high-lev­el mul­ti-sec­toral com­mit­tee on April 16, 2020, with the man­date to draft a roadmap for T&T in the wake of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the eco­nom­ic and so­cial prob­lems that en­sued. In May 2020, the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­vit­ed the pub­lic to be a part of the dis­cus­sions by vis­it­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fi­cial web­site to sub­mit their rec­om­men­da­tions.

The first part of the re­port dealt with the health and well­ness of the pop­u­la­tion, while the sec­ond part of the re­port dealt with the econ­o­my.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the roadmap was in­tend­ed, in the first in­stance, to guide the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions in the im­me­di­ate short-term as the coun­try nav­i­gates a chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od ahead, dri­ven by chang­ing glob­al, re­gion­al, and na­tion­al cir­cum­stances and a new “nor­mal” char­ac­terised by un­cer­tain­ty and volatil­i­ty and like­ly re­duced eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty due to COVID-19.

The re­port stat­ed that "it is equal­ly im­por­tant for the roadmap to es­tab­lish a sol­id foun­da­tion for the trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my and the ac­cel­er­at­ed and sus­tained de­vel­op­ment of our so­ci­ety over the medi­um to long term."

The mem­bers

The Prime Min­is­ter is chair­man of the com­mit­tee and Ger­ry Brooks is co-chair. The 22-mem­ber com­mit­tee com­pris­es econ­o­mists, ac­coun­tants, busi­ness op­er­a­tors, peo­ple from the bank­ing and fi­nance sec­tor, the en­er­gy sec­tor, trade union and civ­il so­ci­ety.

The com­mit­tee mem­bers are not paid for their ex­per­tise as they are do­ing pub­lic ser­vice, the Min­istry of Plan­ning stat­ed.

BOX

Roadmap achieve­ment so far, says Plan­ning Min­istry

The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment said this was what they have achieved so far fol­low­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­port:

1.The im­ple­men­ta­tion of safe back-to-work pro­to­cols fol­low­ing guide­lines es­tab­lished by the Min­istry of Health, which saw im­prove­ments in re­mote and vir­tu­al work­ing arrange­ments, as well as no wide­spread in­fec­tions in places of work.

2. Pol­i­cy de­ci­sions to im­me­di­ate­ly boost and sus­tain the agri­cul­ture sec­tor fea­tured as a pri­or­i­ty in the 2020-2021 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion with over $1 bil­lion (TT) al­lo­cat­ed to the sec­tor to en­cour­age in­creased pro­duc­tion of raw ma­te­ri­als, agro-pro­cess­ing, and the use of agri­cul­tur­al tech­nol­o­gy.

3. Sup­port was pro­vid­ed to the pri­vate sec­tor by the Gov­ern­ment via fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als to keep peo­ple in jobs through tax re­funds, ac­cel­er­at­ed VAT re­funds, ze­ro-in­ter­est gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loans, grants for mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es and more. Over 30,000 in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies have ben­e­fit­ed to date in T&T.

4. Al­though rev­enues have de­clined, pri­or­i­ty has been placed on en­sur­ing the pay­ment of salaries, main­tain­ing em­ploy­ment lev­els, and the pro­vi­sion of es­sen­tial ser­vices, in which this Gov­ern­ment has not fal­tered.

5. Dur­ing April 2021, the Min­istry of Plan­ning con­duct­ed Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) as­sess­ment meet­ings with col­league min­is­ters to dis­cuss the sta­tus of this fis­cal year’s projects and re­vise the plan of ac­tion go­ing in­to the fu­ture with the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic at the fore. Some of the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) projects which have been pro­gress­ing, in­formed by the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery Plan and guid­ed by T&T’s Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy: Vi­sion 2030 such as the Con­tin­u­a­tion of works on the re-de­vel­op­ment of the cen­tral block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the con­struc­tion of a new 106-bed hos­pi­tal in San­gre Grande by the Min­istry of Health, to en­sure that the health sys­tem with its par­al­lel ser­vice re­mains able to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing sup­port.

6. In­fra­struc­ture projects such as the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Coastal Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme, road re­pairs and im­prove­ments, main­te­nance of bridges al­so con­tin­ue un­der the PSIP. There are al­so sev­er­al projects cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en by var­i­ous min­istries fo­cus­ing on digi­ti­sa­tion, food se­cu­ri­ty, hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, build­ing cli­mate and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­silience, and more, all guid­ed by the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery re­port.

–Re­port­ing by Raphael John-Lall

Con­tin­u­ing next week, we look at the pro­pos­als and im­ple­men­ta­tion