Small is­land coun­tries must find their way in a com­pli­cat­ed world. Pop­u­la­tion size is im­por­tant but not de­fin­i­tive. Skills and skill de­vel­op­ment are crit­i­cal, but which skills? Nat­ur­al re­sources are im­por­tant, but on­ly mat­ter if you have the skill and know how to de­vel­op them. On­ly two is­land states are ranked in the top ten world economies: Japan and Eng­land. Small is rel­a­tive. Japan has no nat­ur­al re­sources and is ap­prox­i­mate­ly the same pop­u­la­tion size (70 mil­lion) as Eng­land, France and Ger­many. Yet its econ­o­my is ranked as the third largest ahead of Ger­many ranked fourth, Eng­land 6th, and France 7th.

Time mat­ters and every­thing changes with time. Two hun­dred and fifty years ago, the Unit­ed States was not yet a con­cept and France was pre­pared to cede Cana­da to Eng­land in ex­change for Guade­loupe at the end of the Sev­en Years War in 1763. Guade­loupe had a larg­er econ­o­my than Cana­da at that time when sug­ar was king. Then Caribbean coun­tries were colonies, and a key to wealth gen­er­a­tion in Eu­rope (Eng­land, France and Spain). There­fore Eu­ro­pean wars ex­tend­ed to the Caribbean Sea.

One hun­dred and fifty years ago Japan was a feu­dal so­ci­ety with an agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­my and no nat­ur­al re­sources. Fifty years ago, both Chi­na and In­dia were ranked as poor coun­tries. Now, Chi­na and In­dia to­geth­er ac­count for 40 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and are classed as “mid­dle-in­come” coun­tries by the World Bank, though they are ranked as the sec­ond and fourth largest economies in the world. The Unit­ed States has on­ly five per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion but is the world’s largest econ­o­my.

Caribbean coun­tries with small pop­u­la­tions are now in­de­pen­dent and must find their way in a geopo­lit­i­cal world that is per­haps more com­plex and more in­ter­con­nect­ed by virtue of the tech­no­log­i­cal changes that have mit­i­gat­ed the dis­tance be­tween coun­tries. How do small coun­tries re­main vi­able and rel­e­vant? What does de­vel­op­ment mean and how is it to be achieved? How does a coun­try raise its stan­dard of liv­ing and its na­tion­al in­come and be­come more in­te­grat­ed with the world econ­o­my?

Eco­nom­ic the­o­ry has not been very help­ful. Peo­ple are a coun­try’s great­est re­source as they pro­vide the dy­nam­ic and skill sets to pro­pel a coun­try up­ward.

The Arthur Lewis Mod­el was pred­i­cat­ed on the avail­abil­i­ty of sur­plus labour that would move from the tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor to the more mod­ern in­dus­tri­al sec­tor. The in­dus­tri­al sec­tor would then grow and ab­sorb the labour sur­plus from agri­cul­ture be­com­ing the more prof­itable sec­tor and in­te­grat­ing with the world econ­o­my. In the process, peo­ple would be­come “skilled” in a learn-by-do­ing process.

Whilst this modal­i­ty is true in a gen­er­al way, it is al­so ex­ceed­ing­ly sim­plis­tic. Is im­port­ed cap­i­tal suf­fi­cient to build a mod­ern sec­tor? T&T has re­ceived bil­lions of for­eign in­vest­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor and built world-scale plants. How­ev­er, the en­er­gy sec­tor is cap­i­tal in­ten­sive, em­ploy­ing few­er peo­ple for each dol­lar in­vest­ed than any oth­er sec­tor. There has been some tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer as na­tion­als are com­pe­tent to man­age, main­tain and run the plants any­where in the world and do so, a tes­ta­ment to their ca­pac­i­ty and adapt­abil­i­ty. How­ev­er, can na­tion­als de­sign, de­vel­op and build the same world-scale plants af­ter over 100 years in the en­er­gy busi­ness?

Learn­ing by do­ing is com­pli­cat­ed and re­quires much more than is iden­ti­fied in eco­nom­ics texts. Work per­mit rules, a mech­a­nism de­signed to en­sure that key jobs were avail­able to lo­cals, are still re­quired for for­eign na­tion­als. What is miss­ing? De­vel­op­ing and deep­en­ing re­quired skill sets must be com­ple­ment­ed by a wider range of poli­cies than an­tic­i­pat­ed by the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems as cur­rent­ly de­signed. What are the deficits and how can they be cor­rect­ed? It is im­por­tant to note that Shell com­mis­sioned a labour mar­ket sur­vey to eval­u­ate the depth of skills and labour avail­abil­i­ty be­fore it sanc­tioned the Lo­ran Man­a­tee project.

The key take­away from the lim­it­ed dis­cus­sion is that de­vel­op­ment re­quires a wide range of skills. Tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing must co­ex­ist and in­te­grate with an aca­d­e­m­ic ori­en­ta­tion, at scale to fa­cil­i­tate the de­sired de­vel­op­ment. Fur­ther, along­side tech­ni­cal skills, hu­man skills like dis­ci­pline, or­gan­i­sa­tion, team­work and a com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence must be con­cur­rent­ly de­vel­oped. With­out these, no or­gan­i­sa­tion can com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Na­tion­al stan­dards mean ab­solute­ly noth­ing if not rou­tine­ly met.

Stan­dards and a com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence are re­in­forced by lan­guage and be­hav­iours. What we tol­er­ate is what will be­come com­mon­place. Few T&T firms are world-class. The pri­vate sec­tor is re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that it has the sys­tems to do what is nec­es­sary to be­come world-class. But so al­so must the Gov­ern­ment; its ap­proval sys­tems must al­so be­come world-class. It takes two hands to clap. Do­mes­tic pol­i­cy must fa­cil­i­tate pri­vate sec­tor growth.

In a world of con­stant change to sur­vive, small coun­tries must con­tin­u­al­ly adapt and change. Thus for­eign pol­i­cy must read the ex­ter­nal re­al­i­ty and be con­di­tioned by do­mes­tic needs, an ex­ten­sion of do­mes­tic pri­or­i­ties and in­ter­ests. The de­vel­op­ment of your hu­man re­sources is then in­ter­twined with do­mes­tic and for­eign pol­i­cy. To give a very prac­ti­cal ex­am­ple. No coun­try can suc­cess­ful­ly pro­mote tourism if its crime lev­el is un­con­trol­lable.