JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

CDB's director: T&T must diversify

by

CHARLES KONG SOO
2163 days ago
20190601
Director of Economics at the Caribbean Development Bank Dr Justin Ram.

Director of Economics at the Caribbean Development Bank Dr Justin Ram.

Di­rec­tor of Eco­nom­ics at the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank Dr Justin Ram says T&T must fo­cus on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ways to boost the oth­er sec­tors in the econ­o­my such as tourism, agri­cul­ture, and the cre­ative in­dus­tries.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing a break in the Vy­bz­ing Out­reach Pro­gramme for youths that was host­ed by the CDB in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment at the Hy­att Re­gency, in Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day, where Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe gave the open­ing re­marks, T&T-born Ram said "T&T has a re­al­ly good foun­da­tion to build on. Com­ing off the back of the oil and gas wealth, T&T has built a very good in­fra­struc­ture be­cause of the cheap gas and elec­tric­i­ty it has which is very good if you want to com­pete glob­al­ly.

"But the coun­try is now at a time when it re­al­ly must fo­cus on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, that does not say that oil and gas wouldn’t be im­por­tant, but the em­pha­sis must now be on how to boost the oth­er sec­tors in the econ­o­my.

He said there are a num­ber of sec­tors that hold great po­ten­tial for T&T, one of them is tourism. "T&T has tra­di­tion­al­ly not fo­cused on that, tourism can ac­tu­al­ly pro­vide you with a plat­form that can spur growth in oth­er sec­tors as well, name­ly agri­cul­ture and per­haps al­so the cre­ative in­dus­tries."

He ex­plained if T&T had a blos­som­ing and grow­ing tourism sec­tor that was util­is­ing agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, it will spur growth for farm­ers to pro­duce now for this sort of in­nate ex­port sec­tor with­in the coun­try.

Ram said T&T was one of the most cre­ative places in the world, it’s Car­ni­val and mu­sic were world-renowned, and was an area the coun­try need­ed to con­sid­er how to cap­i­talise on and ex­port.

He said the num­ber one fac­tor in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for small open economies like T&T was the earn­ing of for­eign ex­change, ei­ther the earn­ing of forex or to have do­mes­tic sup­plies that can sub­sti­tute for im­port­ed.

Ram said the net ben­e­fit was for­eign ex­change earn­ings. This was not dif­fi­cult, how­ev­er, he said. What pol­i­cy-mak­ers need­ed to fo­cus on was im­prov­ing the do­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in the coun­try; to make it easy for an en­tre­pre­neur to con­duct busi­ness.

He said in­or­di­nate lengths of time for peo­ple to con­duct trans­ac­tions with Gov­ern­ment, peo­ple lin­ing up for hours were a drain on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, it was now time for T&T to move to­ward digi­ti­sa­tion and E-gov­ern­ment (elec­tron­ic gov­ern­ment).

Ram said a Malaysian col­league re­lat­ed to him that he was able to get his pass­port in one hour, this was what the coun­try was com­pet­ing with.

He said if peo­ple can go to coun­tries that were so easy to fa­cil­i­tate trans­ac­tions, those coun­tries will at­tract in­vest­ment both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and for­eign.

Ram said the CDB had been en­cour­ag­ing re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to im­ple­ment fis­cal rules that gov­ern­ments must op­er­ate with­in a leg­isla­tive frame­work that brought their coun­try’s re­spec­tive bud­gets to a lev­el that was sus­tain­able over time.

'T&T needs mi­grants'

When asked about the newest wave of mi­grants to T&T—Venezue­lans—what im­pact can they have on the coun­try, he replied that from an eco­nom­ic point of view T&T need­ed mi­grants and mi­gra­tion.

He said it was pro­ject­ed for T&T that from 2015 to 2100 the pop­u­la­tion de­cline would reach about 28 per cent.

Ram said if it con­tin­ued there will be few­er peo­ple in so­ci­ety who will have to bear the brunt of pay­ing pen­sions.

He said, how­ev­er, the coun­try had to en­sure that mi­gra­tion was man­aged well with re­spect to reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants by the T&T gov­ern­ment. He said this was a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Ram said most peo­ple who came in­to the coun­try as refugees just want to work and they can con­tribute so much to the econ­o­my which was ben­e­fi­cial to T&T both eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly.

He said so­lu­tions and strate­gies to dri­ve eco­nom­ic and so­cial trans­for­ma­tion in the Caribbean will fea­ture promi­nent­ly when the CDB holds its 49th An­nu­al Meet­ing of its Board of Gov­er­nors on June 5 and 6, at the Hy­att.

Ram said the over­all theme this year was on trans­for­ma­tion.

CDB pres­i­dent, Dr War­ren Smith, will be giv­ing his state­ment to the gov­er­nors at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the board of gov­er­nors Hy­att Re­gency on June 5.

He said Smith will give his vi­sion as to where the bank has come from over the years and what do Caribbean coun­tries need to do in or­der to trans­form and be­come de­vel­oped na­tions with­in a time frame.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored