Raphael John-Lall

Lo­cal econ­o­mists are con­fi­dent that the pres­ence of BRICS coun­tries like Chi­na and In­dia in T&T as in­vestors can help T&T’S eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

In 2006, Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia and Chi­na cre­at­ed the “BRIC” group while South Africa joined in 2010, mak­ing it “BRICS.”

Since then, oth­er large de­vel­op­ing coun­tries have joined the line to join “BRICS Plus.”

The trade group was de­signed to bring to­geth­er the world’s most im­por­tant de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, to chal­lenge the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er of the wealth­i­er na­tions of North Amer­i­ca and West­ern Eu­rope.

While Chi­na has the world’s sec­ond largest econ­o­my, In­dia has the world’s fifth largest econ­o­my.

Ac­cord­ing to a BBC fact­sheet, the ex­pand­ed group has a com­bined pop­u­la­tion of about 3.5 bil­lion, or 45 per cent of the world’s in­hab­i­tants.

Com­bined, mem­bers’ economies are worth more than US$28.5 tril­lion - about 28 per cent of the glob­al econ­o­my.

In 2014, the BRICS na­tions set up the New De­vel­op­ment Bank to lend mon­ey to boost in­fra­struc­ture.

By the end of 2022, it had pro­vid­ed near­ly US$32 bil­lion to emerg­ing na­tions for new roads, bridges, rail­ways and wa­ter sup­ply projects.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley vis­it­ed In­dia in May and in June met mem­bers of the In­di­an In­vest­ment Mis­sion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Clair.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so met chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd, Naveen Jin­dal ,who has ex­pressed in­ter­est in the moth­balled Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

Chi­na and T&T are al­so grow­ing clos­er.

On June 20, T&T and Chi­na cel­e­brat­ed 50 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports, Chi­na’s Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping ex­changed con­grat­u­la­tions with the T&T gov­ern­ment and said that he at­tach­es great im­por­tance to the de­vel­op­ment of Chi­na-T&T re­la­tions. The Chi­nese pres­i­dent said he stands ready to work with T&T to use the 50th an­niver­sary of diplo­mat­ic ties as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to pro­mote high-qual­i­ty Belt and Road co­op­er­a­tion, deep­en ex­changes and co­op­er­a­tion in var­i­ous fields, and take the Chi­na-T&T com­pre­hen­sive co­op­er­a­tive part­ner­ship to a high­er lev­el.

Eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion

While Chi­na has been crit­i­cised in the last few years for “ex­ploit­ing” small­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries with a “debt trap,” In­dia, which is al­so a large in­vestor in Africa and now Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, is not with­out its crit­ics.

UNC Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called out the Gov­ern­ment on In­di­an busi­ness­man Jin­dal, ques­tion­ing if it was “the Venezue­lans” who put the Gov­ern­ment on to Jin­dal to get the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

She slammed the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments that he was un­aware Jin­dal was on al­leged cor­rup­tion charges in In­dia.

Win­ston Dook­er­an, who has served as a for­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor and held min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios over the last 40 years as fi­nance min­is­ter and min­is­ter of for­eign af­fairs in dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tions, told the Busi­ness Guardian that coun­tries like Chi­na and In­dia can play a part in help­ing T&T to de­vel­op and even di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my.

He al­so said that the shifts away from more tra­di­tion­al al­lies like North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope is noth­ing to be wor­ried about.

“I do not see these as ‘shifts’ away from tra­di­tion­al re­la­tion­ships, but rather as ex­plor­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties that a chang­ing world or­der of­fers. It’s a good di­rec­tion, but it re­quires more than state-di­rect­ed lead­er­ship, and an ex­pand­ed pri­vate set of ini­tia­tives is in­te­gral to its suc­cess. Di­ver­si­fy­ing T&T econ­o­my is about the non-en­er­gy sec­tor - widen­ing the eco­nom­ic space of the econ­o­my. En­er­gy in­vest­ment is about ex­plo­ration main­ly, to in­crease pro­duc­tion. I think in­vest­ment from Chi­na and In­dia will be more about widen­ing the non- en­er­gy base of the econ­o­my.”

While there have been fre­quent meet­ings among dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments, Dook­er­an be­lieves that if the re­la­tion­ships are to be mean­ing­ful, col­lab­o­ra­tion with large coun­tries like Chi­na and In­dia must be pri­vate-sec­tor dri­ven.

“To at­tract large-scale in­vest­ment, would de­pend on a pri­vate-sec­tor led growth strat­e­gy - with cat­alyt­ic sup­port from the state.”

He al­so touched on more con­tro­ver­sial top­ics like the US and Chi­na ri­val­ry, ad­vis­ing that T&T is a small de­vel­op­ing coun­try and must stay out of such glob­al “Great Pow­er” com­pe­ti­tions.

“Al­so, the world will not be so eas­i­ly di­vid­ed be­tween West­ern and Non-West­ern blocs, and small coun­tries like T&T must play the for­eign pol­i­cy cards on an equal foot­ing, ad­her­ing, per­haps to the no­tion of ‘ac­tive non align­ment’ - a sub­ject on which we re­cent­ly had a full sem­i­nar at the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (IIR), Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). In ad­di­tion, a new re­gion­al­ism is emerg­ing in the af­ter­math of the an­ti-glob­al­i­sa­tion trends. Our own for­eign pol­i­cy must seize the op­por­tu­ni­ties from this new re­gion­al­ism, in some strate­gic ini­tia­tives, as the Caribbean moves its in­te­gra­tion process­es in­to a con­ver­gence mod­el.”

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James told the Busi­ness Guardian that a small, de­vel­op­ing coun­try like T&T must be strate­gic in how it sources in­vest­ments from large coun­tries like Chi­na and In­dia.

“It de­pends on what you are try­ing to do and what they can help you with. What the coun­try (in­clud­ing To­ba­go) needs to do is de­vel­op its ca­pac­i­ty to in­no­vate, its de­ci­sion-mak­ing in­sti­tu­tions, and its cap­i­tal-pro­duc­ing in­dus­tries at a suf­fi­cient rate. I won’t look to Chi­na and In­dia for any help with the de­vel­op­ment of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing in­sti­tu­tions. In­deed, of the three, the on­ly one I would seek their help with is the de­vel­op­ment of the cap­i­tal-pro­duc­ing in­dus­tries. You can on­ly make the judg­ment about the rel­e­vance of in­fra­struc­tur­al projects when you work out what the stake­hold­ers want to do on three mat­ters iden­ti­fied, at what rate/scale, and what help they need. In some ways, the gov­er­nance arrange­ments have to be cleaned up be­fore that kind of as­sess­ment can be done.”

James al­so ex­pand­ed on what he meant by Chi­na and In­dia can as­sist in de­vel­op­ing T&T’s cap­i­tal-pro­duc­ing in­dus­tries.

“These are ex­portable such as ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing; ex­portable health­care; de­vel­op­ment of the ex­port ca­pac­i­ty of all our cre­ative in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, da­ta sci­ence, etc; re­lat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices; re­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty tourism hous­ing stock and com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty ser­vices.”

Chi­na and In­dia trade da­ta

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the web­site of the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia in T&T, trade (ex­ports and im­ports) be­tween In­dia and T&T to­talled US$169.53 mil­lion in 2019/20 and this num­ber had more than dou­bled to US$368.96 mil­lion by 2023/24.

Ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on the web­site stat­ed: “T&T with its oil and gas re­sources has a high GDP of US $24.46 bil­lion and a per capi­ta in­come of USD$16,032 as for the pe­ri­od 2022-23. Based on its eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­flu­en­tial role in the re­gion and sup­port­ed by re­gion­al and bi­lat­er­al pref­er­en­tial trade agree­ments, T&T pro­vides good op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­porters from In­dia to ac­cess the Caribbean re­gion and be­yond.”

The web­site al­so not­ed that T&T has very good po­ten­tial for in­vest­ment and es­tab­lish­ment of joint ven­tures by In­di­an com­pa­nies in the field of en­er­gy, SMEs, ICT, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals & med­ical equip­ment and con­sum­ables, health, well­ness tourism and Ayurve­da.

Trade and busi­ness ties with Chi­na, the next glob­al gi­ant, have al­so in­creased.

At a meet­ing with Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon in Jan­u­ary 2023, the Am­bas­sador of Chi­na in T&T, Fang Qui high­light­ed the strength of trade be­tween the two coun­tries stat­ing that in the two pre­vi­ous years, an­nu­al trade ex­ceed­ed US$1 bil­lion.

Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing of the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Jan­u­ary 2024, Chi­na’s Am­bas­sador said in 2019, T&T be­came the first Cari­com coun­try whose trade with Chi­na sur­passed US$1 bil­lion, and by 2022 bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween the coun­tries ex­ceed­ed US$13.1 bil­lion, more than dou­bling the val­ue pri­or to join­ing the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive.

Last No­vem­ber, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, who spoke at a fo­rum on Caribbean-Chi­na eco­nom­ic diplo­ma­cy at the Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness in Mt Hope, said there has been a leap in trade and busi­ness re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries which ex­pand­ed by 85 per cent be­tween 2012 and 2022.

De­spite con­cerns about high debt bur­dens, he clar­i­fied that, as of Sep­tem­ber 2023, loans from Chi­na to T&T rep­re­sent­ed less than 5.3 per cent of T&T’s ex­ter­nal debt pro­file.

Browne al­so dis­cussed the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive, em­pha­sis­ing its role in en­hanc­ing eco­nom­ic diplo­ma­cy.

The Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, a flag­ship Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive project, was al­so high­light­ed as a key de­vel­op­ment, fos­ter­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty and ex­pand­ing com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties.