Gail Alexan­der

“Leave no-one be­hind and re­tain and cre­ate jobs.”

That‘s among the core ob­jec­tives of phase one of Gov­ern­ment’s Re­cov­ery Roadmap re­port for T&T to pur­sue in its post-COVID-19 move­ment.

Phase one of the re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Around the same time he spoke, a heavy po­lice pres­ence in ar­eas bor­der­ing the Par­lia­ment was dis­pers­ing with tear gas, a group of plac­ard-bear­ing pro­tes­tors who were head­ing for the Par­lia­ment.

On the in­side, Row­ley not­ed the Roadmap team was cre­at­ed in April to iden­ti­fy and im­ple­ment fur­ther so­lu­tions for T&T.

“This was done in the clear in­dis­putable un­der­stand­ing that no mat­ter how bat­tered we are left, af­ter the pan­dem­ic is over, when it’s all said and done, we would have to take up what’s left of our bed and start walk­ing, even if on­ly with an un­steady gait,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley named Roadmap team mem­bers in­clud­ing for­mer min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte—who sub­se­quent­ly re­signed from Gov­ern­ment over dis­agree­ment on pol­i­cy.

Row­ley al­so thanked mem­bers in­clud­ing Le Hunte, “who at the in­cep­tion worked dili­gent­ly as co-chair to joint­ly lead the team to­wards the pro­duc­tion of this re­port.”

He said the pan­dem­ic threat­ened the foun­da­tions of T&T’s econ­o­my.

“We rec­og­nized that the mea­sures we were forced to put in place to stem the spread of the virus threat­ened jobs, in­come, busi­ness­es and liveli­hoods across T&T. It al­so threat­ened to re­verse strides Gov­ern­ment had made over the term to sta­bilise and turn­around the econ­o­my.

Af­ter im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble, pre­serve jobs, re­vi­tal­ize the econ­o­my ear­li­est and keep ag­gre­gate de­mand at ac­cept­able lev­el, the Roadmap Re­cov­ery team was cre­at­ed.”

The first phase of its work ad­dressed “Sur­viv­ing the Cri­sis”, fo­cus­ing on the pop­u­la­tion’s health and well-be­ing and propos­ing ini­tia­tives to reignite eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and en­sure so­cial sta­bil­i­ty. He said sev­er­al Phase One ini­tia­tives have al­ready been adopt­ed, “in large mea­sure by Gov­ern­ment”. The Fi­nance Min­is­ter and oth­ers have al­ready re­port­ed on them.

The sec­ond phase, cur­rent­ly in progress, fo­cus­es on the medi­um-term and is aimed at re­struc­tur­ing and trans­form­ing the econ­o­my, cre­at­ing a more re­silient, eq­ui­table, and self-suf­fi­cient so­ci­ety. That re­port will be laid ahead.

Row­ley said phase one’s re­port fo­cus­es on ad­dress­ing and mit­i­gat­ing the hard­ship in­flict­ed by COVID-19; restart­ing the econ­o­my and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for sus­tained eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

“The Com­mit­tee con­clud­ed that the pre­vail­ing risks in the en­vi­ron­ment re­quire in­creased fo­cus by Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the next six months, as the in­sti­ga­tor, in­flu­encer and fa­cil­i­ta­tor of ag­gre­gate de­mand and the pro­tec­tor of jobs and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty. It al­so recog­nised the im­por­tance of ac­knowl­edg­ing that both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors will have to play sig­nif­i­cant roles in the short-term to jump­start the econ­o­my.”

Short-term ob­jec­tives iden­ti­fied are (a) So­cial pro­tec­tion – leave no one be­hind; (b) Re­tain and cre­ate jobs; (c) Boost ag­gre­gate de­mand; (d) Min­imise and re­me­di­ate sup­ply dis­rup­tions.

Big fo­cus on Agri­cul­ture

The team de­ter­mined that achieve­ment of these ob­jec­tives can best be ac­com­plished in the fol­low­ing ways:

· Strength­en­ing the So­cial Safe­ty Net by im­proved tech­nol­o­gy and deep­en­ing the in­volve­ment of civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions in the de­liv­ery of so­cial sup­port pro­grammes, fo­cus­ing on women, chil­dren and the dis­pos­sessed;

· In­creas­ing al­lo­ca­tion for So­cial Safe­ty Net pro­grammes as ap­pro­pri­ate and where nec­es­sary (from $9 bil­lion) in 2020, giv­en that the num­ber of per­sons ac­cess­ing the pro­grammes is ex­pect­ed to in­crease;

· Im­ple­ment­ing Safe Back to Work Pro­to­cols

· Adopt­ing pol­i­cy de­ci­sions to im­me­di­ate­ly boost/sus­tain the Agri­cul­ture Sec­tor with em­pha­sis on in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion to re­duce de­pen­dence on im­port­ed food and in­puts; build­ing a more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced agri­cul­ture sys­tem to in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of do­mes­tic food sup­ply; rein­tro­duc­ing a mar­ket sys­tem, for farm­ers, which guar­an­tees min­i­mum price fa­cil­i­ties through Namde­v­co, or sim­i­lar agency, to en­cour­age in­creased pro­duc­tion and pro­vide pro­tec­tion against oc­ca­sion­al gluts in pro­duc­tion;

- Ex­pand­ing and de­vel­op­ing agro-pro­cess­ing to cre­ate a ready mar­ket for farm pro­duce and a greater va­ri­ety in lo­cal­ly pro­duced fare;

- Strength­en­ing link­ages along the food val­ue and dis­tri­b­u­tion chains to make more lo­cal­ly pro­duced food avail­able with­in the coun­try e.g. in the school feed­ing pro­gramme and as part of the so­cial wel­fare pro­gramme. Row­ley said, “As I’ve said from the out­set, we’re all in this to­geth­er and to­geth­er we can not on­ly sur­vive but thrive.“

Row­ley said gas pric­ing and down­stream de­vel­op­ment are ma­jor parts of the re­port.

Oth­er plans in­clude:

• Stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in To­ba­go through projects in­clud­ing the new Crown Point Ter­mi­nal Com­plex;

• En­hanc­ing chan­nels to sup­ply ag­gre­gate and oth­er ma­te­ri­als from Stud­ley Park Quar­ry to Trinidad and oth­er Caribbean lo­ca­tions such as Guyana;

• Pro­vid­ing di­rect sup­port to To­ba­go busi­ness­es and boost­ing lo­cal tourism;

• Sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven agri­cul­ture through re-in­tro­duc­tion of ex­ten­sion ser­vices.

• In­creas­ing Con­struc­tion Sec­tor spend­ing by Gov­ern­ment and Pri­vate Sec­tor;

• Liq­ui­dat­ing out­stand­ing debts in the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor and ac­cel­er­at­ing strate­gic and pri­or­i­ty ‘Shov­el Ready Projects’ in the sec­tor;

• En­hanc­ing en­er­gy sec­tor eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty by en­abling sched­uled main­te­nance, con­struc­tion, and drilling projects;

• Re­struc­tur­ing the Oil/Gas in­dus­try to im­prove com­pet­i­tive­ness and re­cal­i­brat­ing ‘the gas val­ue chain’;

• Con­tin­u­ing ini­tia­tives al­ready un­der­way to es­tab­lish sys­tems of Re­new­able En­er­gy (RE) and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy (EE);

• and Pro­vid­ing ap­pro­pri­ate fi­nan­cial sup­port in the Ser­vices, Re­tail, Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Man­u­fac­tur­ing and oth­er Sec­tors to Mi­cro busi­ness­es, SME’s, En­tre­pre­neurs and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions at all lev­els through ac­cel­er­at­ed pay­ment of VAT Re­funds, Liq­uid­i­ty Sup­port, soft loans with ex­tend­ed mora­to­ria through bank­ing and in­sur­ance in­sti­tu­tions, Cred­it Unions and oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate fo­ra.

The Com­mit­tee, work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fi­nance Min­istry, al­so iden­ti­fied var­i­ous in­no­v­a­tive sources for mo­bil­is­ing ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing for the next nine months with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther fund­ing over the next fis­cal year, if need­ed. (GA)