GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

T&T pay­ing too much for med­ica­tions

Im­port­ing from In­dia could re­duce costs

Op­por­tu­ni­ties in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy abound

T&T could sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the cost of med­ica­tion if it im­ports di­rect­ly from In­dia ac­cord­ing to that coun­try’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Port of Spain Arun Ku­mar Sahu.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian at his Vic­to­ria Av­enue Of­fice, Sahu ex­plained this coun­try does not di­rect­ly im­port phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals form In­dia, not­ing that the lo­cal sec­tor is con­trolled by sup­pli­ers of brands rather than gener­ics.

“In­dia is the biggest pro­duc­er of gener­ics. What I have seen and ob­served in your phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal out­lets here is the brand­ed drug. That is why the price is so high. So you don’t have a di­rect mech­a­nism of sourc­ing our phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, med­i­cines, or our vac­cines di­rect­ly from In­dia.

“If you do so, the price will go down by one tenth of what you are pay­ing here,” Sahu who speaks Odia, Eng­lish, Hin­di and Chi­nese ad­vised.

In­dia has en­gaged in what is termed vac­cine diplo­ma­cy by of­fer­ing much need­ed covid19 vac­cines free of charge to some coun­tries and af­ter much con­tro­ver­sy be­tween the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion and the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er, T&T is al­so to ben­e­fit from 40,000 As­traZeneca vac­cines man­u­fac­tured un­der li­cense in In­dia.

Sahu said In­dia al­so of­fers “Ayurve­da, The Old­est Sys­tem of Health Care” which is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar and which can al­so be ex­plored by T&T’s health sec­tor.

“This pan­dem­ic as taught us that im­mu­ni­ty is very cru­cial, more than the treat­ment. The whole idea of well­ness in In­dia is you lead a healthy life and avoid be­ing sick. Stu­dents can go to pres­ti­gious In­di­an uni­ver­si­ties af­ter A Lev­els and get their de­gree in Ayurvedic med­i­cine but I don’t see a sin­gle one of those peo­ple here. You don’t even get the Ayurvedic med­i­cine here. What you get are the sup­ple­ments.

“Some peo­ple don’t like to take West­ern med­i­cine all the time. In In­dia if you go to a pub­lic or pri­vate hos­pi­tal there is a unit for Ayurvedic med­i­cine. A cus­tomer who is pay­ing for health care has to have that choice,” Sahu sug­gest­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion’s web­site two-way bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween that coun­try and T&T amount­ed to US$ 279.13 mil­lion dur­ing April 2018 to March 2019.

The two year old sta­tis­tics not­ed that crude oil and prod­ucts, drugs and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, iron and steel, gar­ments, rice and oth­er food stuff in­clud­ing spices, IT ser­vices, au­to com­po­nents, ma­chin­ery and trans­porta­tion equip­ment, plas­tic prod­ucts, cos­met­ics, or­gan­ic/in­or­gan­ic chem­i­cals, elec­tron­ic goods, trans­port equip­ment’s, non-fer­rous met­als, gems and jew­ellery, silk, sports goods, chem­i­cals, paints, footwear, car­pets and leather goods con­sti­tut­ed ma­jor sec­tors for im­ports from In­dia.

Ex­port to In­dia in­clud­ed scrap met­als, wood and wood prod­ucts, as­phalt, chem­i­cals and LNG.

Be­tween 2015 to 2016, In­dia’s to­tal ex­ports of agri­cul­tur­al and al­lied com­modi­ties to T&T were US $ 8.17 mil­lion.

In­dia’s prin­ci­pal ex­ports dur­ing this pe­ri­od were seed of cashew nuts, shrimp and prawns, seed of cumin, dried grapes, chick­peas and rice.

But ac­cord­ing to In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er there are so many more op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to busi­ness in this coun­try which are not be­ing ful­ly ex­plored.

Sahu said he sees T&T as a place to do busi­ness and for In­di­an com­pa­nies to in­vest in sev­er­al key ar­eas in­clud­ing IT and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy En­abled Ser­vices (ITES), phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, agri­cul­ture and agro-biotech­nol­o­gy, new en­er­gy (wind and so­lar), tourism, in­clud­ing med­ical tourism, tex­tiles and gar­ments, high­er ed­u­ca­tion au­to­mo­biles, Ayurve­da and well­ness, film, mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment.

Sahu not­ed that Ap­ple has be­gun as­sem­bling in In­dia and its an ex­am­ple of In­dia’s grow­ing pow­er in IT.

In aca­d­e­mics Sahu de­scribed his home­land as the glob­al su­per­pow­er for sev­er­al dis­ci­plines not­ing that In­dia pro­duces about 10,000 sur­geons, 50,000 doc­tors with 26,000 of them be­ing spe­cial­ists, 700,000 man­age­ment grad­u­ates and thou­sands of IT pro­fes­sion­als each year.

“But there’s not a sin­gle In­di­an IT com­pa­ny here de­spite the time zone ad­van­tage be­cause your time zone is ac­tu­al­ly in sync with that of North Amer­i­ca which is very use­ful to all those work­ing in the soft­ware sec­tor,” Sahu said.

He added that he hopes in the not too dis­tinct fu­ture In­di­an soft­ware com­pa­nies will es­tab­lish some fa­cil­i­ties in this coun­try in­clud­ing eLearn­ing, train­ing and soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, adding that is is a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly for youths.

“In any soft­ware com­pa­ny in the world some of the CEOs are In­di­ans,” Sahu added.

He al­so not­ed that the Caribbean bee­keep­ers re­cent­ly launched an App which as cre­at­ed by stu­dents and teach­ers from Kerela, South In­dia.

The am­bas­sador al­so not­ed that T&T can al­so reap huge ben­e­fits from In­dia’s gar­ment in­dus­try, say­ing In­dia has no re­strict­ed eth­nic wear.

“There are many in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies which do In­di­an fash­ion and It’s a huge in­dus­try but I don’t see much of the In­di­an tex­tiles here,”Sahu not­ed.

“Then there’s a whole new area of mod­ern sci­ence which is non-con­ven­tion­al en­er­gy sources like so­lar and wind en­er­gy which al­so have huge po­ten­tial,” which Sahu said this coun­try can al­so ex­plore.

Sahu who has been in T&T for al­most a year and a half said In­dia’s mu­sic, film and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­tries are al­so yet to be ful­ly har­nessed by T&T.

“No­body is part of the Bol­ly­wood in­dus­try,” he said, not­ing that an­i­ma­tion for top in­ter­na­tion­al coun­tries is al­so pro­duced in In­dia.

But what role does the lim­it­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty play in ham­per­ing the growth of these sec­tors?

Sahu sug­gest­ed that per­haps it is a com­mon be­lief that West­ern ed­u­ca­tion trumps that of oth­er parts of the world.

“The Gov­ern­ment of In­dia of­fers schol­ar­ships to do de­grees, post­grad­u­ate stud­ies and PHDs in more than 200 dis­ci­plines to Caribbean stu­dents and hard­ly any body takes ad­van­tage of that.

“Maybe be­cause In­dia is so far both emo­tion­al­ly and sen­ti­men­tal­ly but what most peo­ple don’t know is that 21st cen­tu­ry In­dia is a com­plete­ly new In­dia.

“The young In­dia is a very as­pi­ra­tional In­dia. A high school stu­dent of 17 or 18 years doesn’t have that fear that he can­not change the world. He thinks with a smart­phone or lap­top and an ac­tu­al­ly make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the whole world,” Sahu not­ed.

Strength­en­ing ties

To en­sue stronger link­ages be­tween the two coun­tries Sahu said he in­tends to reach out to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

He not­ed that be­fore COVID-19 his Em­bassy host­ed a num­ber of out­reach pro­grammes which will con­tin­ue.

“All the sec­tors men­tioned I am go­ing to fur­ther ex­am­ine one every month to strength­en ties even fur­ther and build on them,” Sahu added.

On whether In­dia views this coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with Chi­na as a threat to its own re­la­tion­ship with T&T Sahu said Chi­na is al­so the biggest trad­ing part­ner of In­dia.

‘They are an ex­porter of goods to the rest of the world. The strengths and mod­els are dif­fer­ent. Chi­na has done re­mark­ably well and In­dia has not done any less” he added.

And on de­vel­op­ing In­dia’s tourism prod­uct be­yond the di­as­po­ra Sahu said tourists from all faiths and from all over the world con­tin­ue to vis­it In­dia an­nu­al­ly.

He said there are al­so in­cen­tives for peo­ple to vis­it In­dia like the “Know In­dia Pro­gramme” which is ful­ly fund­ed by the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment.

Due to the pan­dem­ic the pro­gramme was tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed but hope­ful­ly it is ex­pect­ed to soon re­sume.