Oc­to­ber 2011 might just be one of the most im­por­tant months in T&T his­to­ry as ac­cord­ing to an up­dat­ed De­vel­op­ment As­sis­tance Com­mit­tee (DAC) re­port T&T is now a de­vel­oped coun­try. This was an­nounced by High Com­mis­sion­er for Britain in T&T Arthur Snell in his blog on the For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Of­fice's Web site. Ac­cord­ing to the blog, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) re­leased its DAC list for 2011 in Oc­to­ber. For the first time T&T has not been in­clud­ed on that list. Ac­cord­ing to Snell, this re­flect­ed a sus­tained pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic growth and rel­a­tive­ly high per capi­ta in­come.

In his mes­sage Snell said the OECD played an im­por­tant role in co-or­di­nat­ing the aid poli­cies of the world's biggest donor coun­tries. "This in­cludes the de­f­i­n­i­tion of which are ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­tries that qual­i­fy for aid mon­ey from the biggest donors," he wrote. Snell felt it would be sim­plis­tic to sug­gest that be­ing a de­vel­oped coun­try was the same as a coun­try in which every­one had ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment. He added that for some pur­pos­es be­ing a de­vel­oped coun­try may seem like a dis­ad­van­tage as T&T might no longer qual­i­fy for cer­tain types of aid or fund­ing.