The Multi Sectoral Group (the Vision 2020 Planning Committee), appointed by the PNM Government, was charged in 2002 with the development of a national strategic plan that would take this nation into developed nation status by 2020. The plan, submitted in 2005, defined a model of four interacting parts: developing innovative people, nurturing a caring society, governing effectively, enabling competitive business, investing in sound infrastructure and environment. Following the submission and acceptance of the Vision 2020 strategic plan (laid in Parliament in 2006), the Vision 2020 operational plan for 2007-2010 was prepared by the Ministry of Planning under the same headings as the strategic plan. Both plans were a step forward and their breadth was immense and involved all of the activities of government, to be managed and controlled by a results-based management system. Two reports on the progress of the Vision 2020 operational plan were done-2007-2008 and 2008-2009. The first reiterated the expectations of the operational plan and issued instructions to the various ministries to align their plans with the relevant outcomes of the operational plan. The report for 2009-2010 is incomplete due to lack of information.
The 2008-2009 report claims that the Government had strategies that included the creation of a culture of innovation, promoting business process innovation, addressing the brain drain etc. The Government chose certain sectors to target, eg entertainment and film, maritime, fish and fish procession, food and beverage, printing and packaging (much like the present PP), and then talked about a foresighting exercise after it had tied its own hands by these choices. The Vision 2020 strategic plan correctly called for a national innovation system but nowhere was such a system described. Under my watch, the Ministry of Planning was engaged, as also called for in the Vision 2020 plan, on the implementation of a national innovation system-our innovation diamond. We had to get the people behind us, so we did a series of panchayats across the nation. We embarked on a foresighting exercise before we could choose the sectors and technologies that would drive the restructuring. We also needed to provide an instrument that delivered, implemented and created knowledge-our centres of excellence. We knew that our education system had to be revamped from the primary level up-that would take us 20 years before we got the outputs of this new education system. Hence we would have to look to our tertiary education system and select the brightest-those who could go abroad and excel-and groom them into our centres of excellence via special programmes.
We would have to go to the diaspora and get some of them to return to our new institutions of the innovation diamond. We had to implement our designed finance, marketing and market development systems, spawn our new SMEs via our business incubators (housed in the centres of excellence) and reconstruct our business sector; we would have to exploit our natural advantage via innovation. All of these institutions are fundamental to our diamond and if any of them was missing the system fails. Indeed, we had not dumped the vision of the 2020 strategic plan. The Ministry of Planning was implementing a dynamic structure and network within which we could continue this economic restructuring while other ministries, facilitated by the Council of Ministers, addressed the other areas that support economic development. This was one area in which the work of a previous regime was to be taken further. Have we regressed?
Mary K King
Via e-mail