An­dre Wor­rell

There is not enough do­mes­tic cap­i­tal avail­able in T&T to sup­port lo­cal de­vel­op­ment says the for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, who spoke yes­ter­day at a con­fer­ence host­ed by the De­part­ment of Man­age­ment Stud­ies of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

The event was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort by the T&T In­sur­ance In­sti­tute (TTII), the As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies (AT­TIC) and UWI held at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

Browne's pre­sen­ta­tion had the theme In­sur­ance, Sav­ings and Cap­i­tal Al­lo­ca­tion. He said there is a greater need for in­vest­ments by lo­cal firms if the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives are to be achieved.

"The cost of a methanol plant, the cost of an en­er­gy sec­tor plant, is rough­ly US$250 mil­lion. In rough trans­la­tions we're talk­ing about TT$1.3 bil­lion. At any one point in time, to in­vest in any spe­cif­ic plant it means we would have to use the en­tire cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion of the in­sur­ance sec­tor in any one year just to fi­nance one plant," he said.

Browne added that the way in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­lar­ly pen­sion funds, are reg­u­lat­ed ef­fec­tive­ly rules them out from mak­ing any "green­field" in­vest­ments that re­quire tak­ing on greater risks.

"In a de­vel­op­ing coun­try look­ing to move for­ward, look­ing to de­vel­op it­self from an in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive, we need to talk about the changes that need to be made from a pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness ori­en­ta­tion. Im­me­di­ate­ly, those in­vest­ment cri­te­ria are very con­ser­v­a­tive," he said.

"If we are to move for­ward there is need for ad­di­tion­al do­mes­tic in­vest­ments."

Browne warned that that con­tin­ued de­pen­dence on for­eign in­vest­ment pos­es se­ri­ous risk to the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives.

He ex­plained: "As long we con­tin­ue to de­pend on for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, we will not be able to con­trol the flow of fi­nances and the prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion of the things be­ing done. A coun­try de­vel­ops by de­vel­op­ing its peo­ple and their in­di­vid­ual ca­pac­i­ties."

Oth­er pre­sen­ters at the con­fer­ence were Lloyd Ince, prin­ci­pal at Con­sult­ing In­ter­face Lim­it­ed; Mar­lene Mur­ray, uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er in in­sur­ance and risk man­age­ment and Sookdeo Beepath, AT­TIC di­rec­tor.

The ob­jec­tive of yes­ter­day sem­i­nar was to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on the crit­i­cal role of the In­sur­ance In­dus­try and it was planned as a cat­a­lyst for fu­ture out­reach ini­tia­tives to raise the im­age of the sec­tor.