Raphael John-Lall

Strate­gic se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant, Garvin Heer­ah has warned that the ris­ing crime lev­els will turn po­ten­tial for­eign in­vestors away from in­vest­ing in T&T, which can hurt its econ­o­my.

Heer­ah spoke at a we­bi­nar host­ed by the Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­part­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) en­ti­tled “Does the Lev­el of Crime De­rail the Good In­ten­tions of the Up­com­ing Bud­get?”

Af­ter speak­ing at the we­bi­nar last Fri­day, he gave the Busi­ness Guardian more de­tails.

“As for­eign in­vestors eval­u­ate po­ten­tial mar­kets, se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty are fun­da­men­tal cri­te­ria. The cur­rent state of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sends a wor­ry­ing sig­nal, rais­ing con­cerns about the safe­ty of in­vest­ments and per­son­nel in T&T. In­vestors are grow­ing cau­tious, and many are now re­con­sid­er­ing or de­lay­ing in­vest­ment de­ci­sions due to the per­va­sive threat of crime. This is a crit­i­cal is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly as T&T seeks to po­si­tion it­self as a hub for for­eign busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the en­er­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and tourism sec­tors.”

He not­ed that one of the met­rics that for­eign in­vestors look at is a coun­try’s crime rate and T&T has the un­for­tu­nate rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing ranked high­ly on crime sta­tis­tics ta­bles when com­pared to oth­er coun­tries.

“Fur­ther­more, the glob­al per­cep­tion of safe­ty in T&T is rapid­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. As crime sta­tis­tics rise, and re­ports of gang war­fare and home in­va­sions be­come more fre­quent, po­ten­tial in­vestors are re­ceiv­ing a dam­ag­ing mes­sage: T&T may no longer be a safe or se­cure place to do busi­ness. This per­cep­tion threat­ens to erode the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can re­gion.”

He added that in a glob­alised econ­o­my, coun­tries com­pete for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) and their abil­i­ty to at­tract in­vestors and their mon­ey is on­ly be­ing hurt as T&T is now viewed as be­ing un­sta­ble.

“In the glob­alised econ­o­my, coun­tries are com­pet­ing for FDI by of­fer­ing not on­ly favourable busi­ness con­di­tions, but al­so a se­cure and sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment. T&T’s cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis un­der­mines its abil­i­ty to com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly, dri­ving away po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties that could boost eco­nom­ic growth, cre­ate jobs, and stim­u­late de­vel­op­ment.”

To re­gain its po­si­tion as a safe and re­li­able des­ti­na­tion for in­vest­ment, Heer­ah said T&T must adopt a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy that ad­dress­es its na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges.

This means in­vest­ing in:

1. Strength­ened bor­der con­trol: Im­ple­ment ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies, im­proved in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, and stronger phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to se­cure bor­ders and pre­vent the in­flow of il­le­gal arms and drugs;

2. Crime pre­ven­tion and law en­force­ment: De­ploy more tar­get­ed and so­phis­ti­cat­ed polic­ing ef­forts, dis­man­tling gang net­works, ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of crime, and restor­ing law and or­der in com­mu­ni­ties;

3. Eco­nom­ic and so­cial pro­grammes: Ad­dress­ing the so­cio-eco­nom­ic dri­vers of crime, such as pover­ty, un­em­ploy­ment, and in­equal­i­ty, by fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic in­clu­sion and so­cial de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives;

4. Glob­al part­ner­ships: Strength­en­ing in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions to share in­tel­li­gence, strate­gies, and best prac­tices in com­bat­ing or­gan­ised crime and ter­ror­ism, while restor­ing con­fi­dence in the safe­ty of T&T.

State of emer­gency

Heer­ah and oth­er speak­ers al­so de­bat­ed the use­ful­ness of im­ple­ment­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE) in com­bat­ting crime and its im­pact on busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

He took the po­si­tion that busi­ness­es will not ben­e­fit from im­ple­ment­ing an­oth­er SoE, as T&T has ex­per­i­ment­ed with that in the past.

“There is eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion. An SoE, par­tic­u­lar­ly one in­volv­ing cur­fews or re­stric­tions, can se­ri­ous­ly dis­rupt busi­ness­es, hin­der eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, and cre­ate long-term dam­age to the econ­o­my. Many busi­ness­es are al­ready strug­gling, and the loss of rev­enue due to re­stric­tions on move­ment and op­er­at­ing hours could have se­vere eco­nom­ic reper­cus­sions.”

Ja­maica’s High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, Na­tal­ie Camp­bell-Ro­driques, who al­so spoke dur­ing the we­bi­nar, gave Ja­maica’s ex­pe­ri­ence in bring­ing down its crime rate and sta­bil­is­ing the econ­o­my.

In Au­gust, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness de­clared a state of emer­gency in the na­tion’s south­ern Claren­don parish af­ter eight peo­ple, in­clud­ing a sev­en-year-old boy, were killed in sep­a­rate gun at­tacks, .

Camp­bell-Ro­driques dis­agreed with the crit­ics who ar­gue that an SoE will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on busi­ness, say­ing that what­ev­er short­falls may oc­cur will be coun­tered when crime is re­duced and busi­ness­es can pros­per in a crime-free en­vi­ron­ment in the long run.

She al­so dis­agreed with econ­o­mists who draw a cor­re­la­tion be­tween a poor per­form­ing econ­o­my and a high­er crime rate say­ing, “be­cause you are poor does not mean you will com­mit crimes.”

She boast­ed that Ja­maica’s econ­o­my has sta­bilised and it is now the best it has ever been, at­tribut­ing Ja­maica’s re­duc­tion in crime to US$95 mil­lion spent on crime fight­ing ini­tia­tives like im­proved tech­nol­o­gy, bet­ter salaries for po­lice of­fi­cers, stiffer penal­ties for il­le­gal firearm pos­ses­sion and stake­hold­er col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Macro­econ­o­my and drug trade

Crim­i­nol­o­gist and au­thor Dau­rius Figueira, who al­so spoke dur­ing the we­bi­nar, said whether an econ­o­my is boom­ing or not has lit­tle im­pact on the mod­ern drug trade, which has evolved and changed its busi­ness mod­el in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Af­ter the sem­i­nar, he shared more with the Busi­ness Guardian.

“In T&T and the Caribbean, we are tran­si­tion points to the con­sumer mar­ket of Eu­rope first and the East­ern Seaboard of the USA sec­ond. The con­di­tion of the econ­o­my of the tran­si­tion zone does not im­pact the lev­el of de­mand of the con­sumer mar­kets of the North At­lantic.

“The Colom­bian il­lic­it busi­ness mod­el tar­gets tran­si­tion-zone na­tions with fal­ter­ing economies for pen­e­tra­tion be­cause it is much eas­i­er to cor­rupt the en­tire state ap­pa­ra­tus and its po­lit­i­cal or­der. It al­so en­ables them to ap­ply their po­lit­i­cal mod­el of para­mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion in­to the pol­i­tics of the state. “

He fur­ther ex­plained that the Mex­i­can il­lic­it busi­ness mod­el favours po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty and tran­si­tion economies ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to the economies of their con­sumer na­tions.

“Hence in the Caribbean, Puer­to Ri­co, US Vir­gin Is­lands and the for­mer colonies and over­seas ter­ri­to­ries of Eu­rope are the pri­or­i­ty. T&T is in this group be­cause of our ex­ten­sive en­er­gy links to the North At­lantic with bulk car­ri­ers etc.

“The Mex­i­can busi­ness mod­el al­so calls up­on all tran­si­tion na­tion af­fil­i­ates of theirs in gang­land to gen­er­ate and amass wealth from the do­mes­tic econ­o­my through il­lic­it means. As the econ­o­my stut­ters, de­mand for il­lic­it prod­ucts and ser­vices does not col­lapse, it in­creas­es as cit­i­zens self-med­icate in­tense­ly to cope.”

He ex­plained this is why the menu of syn­thet­ic il­lic­it drugs has ex­plod­ed in T&T.

“Next comes the in­vest­ment in a range of lic­it ven­tures to gen­er­ate wealth. The lo­cal drug traf­fick­ing fam­i­lies be­hold­en to the Colom­bian busi­ness mod­el are the ones who im­pact the do­mes­tic econ­o­my the most.

“The traf­fick­ing of prod­ucts to con­sumer mar­kets by transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime cares lit­tle for, and is not hin­dered in any way by, the growth or stag­na­tion of the lo­cal econ­o­my. On­ly ef­fec­tive polic­ing im­pacts their op­er­a­tions in the tran­si­tion,” said Figueira.