Raphael John-Lall

While T&T’s Growth Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) is grow­ing again, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics Roger Ho­sein be­lieves that the busi­ness sec­tor will on­ly ful­ly ben­e­fit once there is a re­duc­tion in the crime wave that has swept the coun­try.

He said in 2022, the econ­o­my re­turned to growth which has con­tin­ued in 2023 and this opens up op­por­tu­ni­ties for the busi­ness sec­tor.

“The chal­lenge for the small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es is be­yond the eco­nom­ic growth sit­u­a­tion. I think it is about how do you pre­vent a man from lock­ing your neck af­ter you have fin­ished sell­ing dou­bles 10pm in the night. The re­al chal­lenge in the con­text of an eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion or in an econ­o­my now com­ing out of an eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion with 607 mur­ders last year and al­most close to 470 mur­ders this year is how do you man­age crime while you are strug­gling to make ends meet with a low lev­el of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Ho­sein spoke on Oc­to­ber 26 at a vir­tu­al post bud­get fo­rum host­ed by the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Val­sayn. The theme of the fo­rum was “Look­ing for an­swers on how the bud­get af­fects you as a work­er.”

Ho­sein praised the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for cap­tur­ing il­le­gal firearms in San­ta Cruz re­cent­ly, among oth­er suc­cess­es.

“Yes­ter­day or the day be­fore, they al­so made a bust with co­caine. I am see­ing more and more work be­ing done by the Po­lice. That does not mean the small and medi­um en­ter­prise per­son is free to work un­til 12 at night. It means small and slow steps are be­ing made in the right di­rec­tion and it’s im­por­tant that we ac­knowl­edge that. What I would say is that it’s re­al­ly scary be­ing out there and be­ing a busi­nessper­son and while we may have made strides in the last few months, in or­der for the small and medi­um busi­ness per­son to ben­e­fit from the re­turn to eco­nom­ic growth, we need the right en­abling en­vi­ron­ment.”

Ho­sein al­so com­ment­ed on the coun­try’s low un­em­ploy­ment rate say­ing while the 3.7 per cent sta­tis­tic is ac­cu­rate, the broad­er pic­ture is that the coun­try has a large pop­u­la­tion that is eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ac­tive and are not look­ing for jobs and this is not good.

Dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try’s un­em­ploy­ment rate is cur­rent­ly 3.7 per cent.

“While you see the un­em­ploy­ment rate is very low, the eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ac­tive pop­u­la­tion who are not in the labour force is very high. It is about 478,800. If you look at per­sons with jobs, you would see in 2014 we had 623,300 peo­ple. The Min­is­ter is not wrong but be­cause a lot of peo­ple dropped out of the labour force be­tween 2015 and 2023. So, if you lose your job and drop out of the labour force and you are not count­ed as un­em­ployed, you would see a very low un­em­ploy­ment rate. The Min­is­ter is not wrong at all, ex­cept that the sto­ry is in­com­plete and the re­al tragedy lies in the num­ber of peo­ple who are eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ac­tive. We have a lot of work to do to re­cov­er the labour mar­ket.” Ho­sein said.

New eco­nom­ic mod­el

Trade and in­vest­ment con­sul­tant Tahar­qa Obi­ka, who al­so ad­dressed the post-bud­get fo­rum, spoke about the changes in the na­tion­al econ­o­my from post in­de­pen­dence to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

He ar­gued that lo­cals now own a greater share of the econ­o­my than in the 1960s and 1970s and now more em­pha­sis must be placed on de­vel­op­ing the small busi­ness sec­tor.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, as a young per­son who en­tered the labour force in the 1970’s, you would have looked at the Gov­ern­ment on one end or to a for­eign com­pa­ny on the next end to get a job as the for­eign com­pa­nies con­trolled the com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my. Those days were the last ves­tiges of colo­nial­ism. The Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to find its feet in terms of av­enues for em­ploy­ment. The house­holds did not cre­ate much em­ploy­ment in terms of large scale in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment.”

He said 50 years lat­er, the coun­try has suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en over much of the com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my.

“The Gov­ern­ment has tak­en over lands from Ca­roni, lands from es­tates that the colo­nials con­trolled. Lo­cal fam­i­lies are now in­vest­ing to the point where they are now spread­ing their wings. There are T&T-fam­i­ly busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in Guyana, up the is­lands. Re­pub­lic Bank, which is owned by the peo­ple of T&T is in Ghana, First Cit­i­zens Bank is all over the Caribbean. So the busi­ness mod­el of the coun­try has changed from call­ing on the for­eign in­vestor to solve our prob­lems, to how can we as a peo­ple in­vest in our com­mu­ni­ty and what is the Gov­ern­ment do­ing to help me as a small or a medi­um in­vestor.”

Obi­ka said the de­vel­op­men­tal ques­tion in the 1960’s and 1970’s was how T&T’s cit­i­zens would get con­trol of the com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my away from the for­mer colo­nial mas­ter. How­ev­er, he said the de­vel­op­men­tal ques­tion to­day is not that but how can one’s fam­i­ly be able to in­vest.

“This means more eTeck parks and small­er scale parks so that peo­ple can in­vest. With­in the bud­get you will see some as­pects of that. Of course more is al­ways nec­es­sary. An en­tre­pre­neur in every fam­i­ly should be the as­pi­ra­tion as a peo­ple.”

Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer of the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) Ozzi War­wick who al­so spoke at the post bud­get dis­cus­sion said that the Gov­ern­ment must not on­ly use eco­nom­ic da­ta to de­ter­mine how well the coun­try is do­ing, but must raise the stan­dard of the man on the street.

“The man­age­ment of an econ­o­my is not for some­one to boast about the GDP in­creas­ing. It’s about your stan­dard of liv­ing as a cit­i­zen of a coun­try. So GDP in­creas­ing, de­creas­ing and all the num­bers that you hear and about clos­ing the deficit gap sounds nice, but my land­lord is wait­ing out­side for rent. I have no job. When you hear pol­i­cy­mak­ers and politi­cians and bour­geois econ­o­mists and com­men­ta­tors rat­tle off a few things, it means noth­ing if the stan­dard of liv­ing of our cit­i­zens is falling.”