In the local context, the issue of overseas travel by this country's political leaders has always been controversial. The decision by former Prime Minister Patrick Manning to fly to certain key Latin American countries in a private aircraft in the period before the Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Port-of-Spain in April 2009 attracted a great deal of negative commentary about the wastage of taxpayers' money. There was also much negative criticism of Mr Manning's decision to travel on official business to Uganda and to the African Union conference in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, in 2007. On her return on Sunday from her 13-day State trip to India, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar defended the length of time she was out of the country and the size of the delegation that accompanied her. On both counts the Prime Minister stands on solid ground. As she pointed out on Sunday, four of those 13 days were spent making the long flight to and from India and much of the remaining nine days would have been spent going to and from hotels, airports and meetings in India.
In terms of the size of the delegation, it is clear that the Prime Minister was accompanied by several ministers who would have been involved in their own meetings. A parallel trade and investment group, led by Minister Stephen Cadiz, also travelled to India and, according to Mrs Persad-Bissessar, the entire trip included 200 meetings, close to 50 memoranda of understanding and some 50 trade meetings. While in India, according to the Prime Minister, local officials met with some 100 Indian companies with a view to seeking their investment in T&T. Business discussions were held on ICT, wastewater management, ship-building and repair, business process out-sourcing, the film industry, fashion, plastics and agriculture. "Stemming from the business meetings we can expect to see concrete proposals from more than ten per cent of the companies targeted," Mrs Persad-Bissessar added. All foreign travel by leaders-indeed, all expenditure by the Government-must be justified based on the likely benefits to the country in the future. Speaking at Piarco on Sunday, the Prime Minister made it clear that there would be a significant number of follow-up visits by Indian technocrats and investors, particularly those focused on the energy sector.
Wisely, she also spoke about the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee that would provide some oversight to ensure that projects that were talked about in India get the opportunity to move to the feasibility stage. Attracting foreign investment is one of the ways in which T&T's dormant economy is going to get the kick-start that it needs to resume construction activity similar to the last decade. If the trip to India results in even two large projects getting off the ground sometime in the future, the expense of the trip would have been worthwhile. It has been said before that a Prime Minister cannot sell T&T to the world by sitting down in Port-of-Spain. On that score, if what is required is the Prime Minister at the head of a delegation to sell the country to the world and win new foreign investment, we recommend that the Prime Minister should immediately start scheduling similar investment missions to Central America, China and Japan. The Government also needs to ensure that the infrastructure of economic diplomacy is in place to make certain that issues such as trade agreements, non-tariff barriers, language and cultural differences, and currency exchange will not be impediments to trade.