An­tho­ny Wil­son

Regi­nald Du­mas is one of the news­pa­per colum­nists in this coun­try who I make it my busi­ness to read reg­u­lar­ly.

Mr Du­mas is one of this coun­try's most high­ly ac­com­plished cit­i­zens–hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from Cam­bridge and hav­ing served as this coun­try's high com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da, In­dia, Ethiopia, Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean and as am­bas­sador to the US. He al­so served as the head of T&T's pub­lic ser­vice.

His com­men­taries are al­ways well re­searched, and while I do not agree with all of his points, I val­ue the fact that they come from deep re­flec­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence.

It is as a re­sult of the fact that I hold him in such high re­gard that I was so dis­turbed by his col­umn on Sat­ur­day.

In it, Mr Du­mas was crit­i­cal of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's sug­ges­tion that T&T might "in­vest in quar­ry­ing fa­cil­i­ties in Do­mini­ca and there­by give that coun­try a new area for eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment and job cre­ation."

Mr Du­mas not­ed that Do­mini­ca has a "very del­i­cate eco-sys­tem and grow­ing wor­ry is be­ing ex­pressed over the en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion of the is­land."

He went on to quote two re­ports that re­ferred to the pos­si­ble detri­men­tal im­pact of quar­ry­ing on Do­mini­ca's "very del­i­cate eco-sys­tem."

While con­cern about state of the Do­mini­can en­vi­ron­ment is en­tire­ly laud­able, one might have thought that some­one with Mr Du­mas' in­tel­lect would have been as con­cerned about the state of the Do­mini­can econ­o­my and the Do­mini­can peo­ple.

And, it seems to me, that if the Do­mini­can peo­ple had any say in the mat­ter they would be more like­ly to choose the Man­ning con­cept of "eco­nom­ic growth, de­vel­op­ment and job cre­ation" over the Du­mas con­cept of "grow­ing wor­ry over the en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion of the is­land."

That's be­cause while Do­mini­ca has a GDP per capi­ta (pur­chas­ing pow­er par­i­ty) of US$9,900, with­out a new source of na­tion­al in­come and jobs, its short-term prospects are bleak, its medi­um-term prospects are bleak and its long-term prospects are bleak.

Here's what an East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank doc­u­ment, ti­tled "Na­tion­al Ac­counts Sta­tis­tics 2008" had to say about Do­mini­ca in 2007.

n Man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put de­clined by 3.8 per cent, main­ly due to the clo­sure of Re­fresh sec­tion of Do­mini­ca Co­conut Prod­ucts (DCP) in Sep­tem­ber 2007. This re­sult­ed in de­clines in pro­duc­tion of den­tal cream and oth­er re­fresh prod­ucts of 31.5 per cent.

n Pro­duc­tion of ba­nanas, the main ex­port crop rose by 1.9 per cent to 45,565 tonnes notwith­stand­ing the ad­verse im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Dean on the ba­nana in­dus­tries in Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. In Do­mini­ca val­ue added in the ba­nana sec­tor fell by 5.2 per cent af­ter reg­is­ter­ing growth of 2.4 per cent in 2006.

n Stay-over ar­rivals to the EC­CU de­clined by 2.5 per cent to 1,058.5 mil­lion. Among the mem­ber coun­tries, low­er lev­els of stay-over vis­i­tors were record­ed in Do­mini­ca, St Kitts and Nevis and St Lu­cia.

n The num­ber of cruise ship pas­sen­gers rose by 24.7 per cent to a record lev­el of 2.3 mil­lion, in­flu­enced by the in­tro­duc­tion of larg­er sized cruise ves­sels and the re­turn of a ma­jor cruise line to the EC­CU. In­creas­es were record­ed in all coun­tries, for which cruise ar­rivals are re­port­ed, ex­cept Do­mini­ca.

While its per­for­mance in 2007 may have been af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Dean which caused dam­age equal to about 24 per cent of Do­mini­ca's GDP, the first words in the text of the Sep­tem­ber 2008 In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund staff re­port on the is­land state: "Do­mini­ca is ex­treme­ly vul­ner­a­ble to ex­oge­nous shocks, and re­cent eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy has been aimed at cre­at­ing buffers against such events. The econ­o­my is sus­cep­ti­ble to a va­ri­ety of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and is ranked 12th on the list of 111 coun­tries on the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at/World Bank's com­pos­ite vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in­dex."

That vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is un­der­scored by the fact that the ba­nana in­dus­try has no fu­ture in an is­land like Do­mini­ca be­cause of the elim­i­na­tion of the pref­er­ences and the tar­iff pro­tec­tion for West In­di­an ba­nanas by the Eu­ro­pean Union.

There are many who feel that Do­mini­ca, with its black sand beach­es and deep forests and rivers, is the per­fect eco-tourist des­ti­na­tion. There are peo­ple who say the same thing about T&T. The is­sue is are there enough com­mit­ted eco-in­vestors will­ing to do for Do­mini­ca what Span­ish cap­i­tal did for the north coast of Ja­maica?

And is Do­mini­ca ever like­ly to at­tract enough eco-tourists to be able to jus­ti­fy the bil­lions that will need to be spent con­struct­ing a new air­port, sea­port and roads on the is­land?

It may be that loans and grants from the Gov­ern­ment of Chi­na and the Eu­ro­pean Union would un­der­write such ex­pen­di­ture. Such arrange­ments may have some im­pact on the is­land's debt-to-GDP ra­tio which is al­ready in the vicin­i­ty of 100 per cent.

And it would in­deed be in­ter­est­ing for Do­mini­ca to un­der­take this mas­sive nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment with­out both­er­ing to trou­ble its lo­cal ag­gre­gate re­sources. I'm sure there would be en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists who would en­cour­age the im­por­ta­tion of ag­gre­gate from Cana­da to build Do­mini­ca's in­fra­struc­ture while leav­ing the is­land's lush trop­i­cal forests un­touched–the bet­ter to be en­joyed by the fu­ture eco-tourists. That ap­proach, how­ev­er, may trou­ble the is­land's bal­ance of pay­ments–al­ready in an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry state.

With its high rate of un­em­ploy­ment and pover­ty, is there any rea­son why Do­mini­ca should not de­vel­op a mod­ern quar­ry in­dus­try, with all the nec­es­sary en­vi­ron­men­tal safe­guards in place?

What the re­gion needs is bal­anced and sus­tain­able in­dus­tries which add max­i­mum val­ue to the re­gion's hu­man and nat­ur­al re­sources.

Fi­nal­ly, in his Sat­ur­day col­umn, Mr Du­mas stat­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter "has for years been un­sym­pa­thet­ic to the en­vi­ron­men­tal move­ment."

This may be re­lat­ed to the fact that the en­vi­ron­men­tal move­ment has de­vel­oped ever-clos­er links to the coun­try's op­po­si­tion par­ties.

How does one ac­count for the fact that on June 18, T&T's of­fi­cial par­lia­men­tary Op­po­si­tion sent out a let­ter to the ed­i­tor by Prof Kublals­ingh, who is bet­ter known as an an­ti-smelter ac­tivist than as a UWI lec­tur­er?

And how does one ac­count for the fact that on June 16, a spokesman for the an­ti-smelter move­ment sent out an e-mail draw­ing the at­ten­tion of her me­dia con­tacts to the fact that Gayelle was broad­cast­ing a an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Bas­deo Pan­day three days af­ter?