Natasha Said­wan

Pro­duc­tion Ed­i­tor

natasha.said­wan@guardian.co.tt

About Mar­la Dukha­ran

In three words, Mar­la Dukha­ran de­scribed her­self as de­ter­mined, cu­ri­ous and ex­haust­ed.

And who wouldn’t be. As one of the re­gion’s lead­ing econ­o­mists and ad­vis­ers, Dukha­ran’s pro­found in­sights on Caribbean eco­nom­ic is­sues have in­flu­enced state pol­i­cy and pri­vate sec­tor de­ci­sion-mak­ing through­out the years.

Her ca­reer spans well over two decades, with im­por­tant roles in sev­er­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in­clud­ing Re­pub­lic Bank, Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers, RBC Fi­nan­cial Caribbean, and Bitt Inc.

All the while an­swer­ing to “Mom” from two teenagers.

A Bar­ba­dos res­i­dent for the last five years, Dukha­ran is an alum­nus of the UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus and a true daugh­ter of the soil hav­ing com­plet­ed all of her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion here, in­clud­ing her BSc, MSc, and MPhil de­grees in eco­nom­ics.

Pas­sion­ate and qual­i­fied in her craft, her frank­ness and re­lata­bil­i­ty have made her a high­ly sought-af­ter speak­er re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Here is her sto­ry...

Q. Why eco­nom­ics?

Ac­tu­al­ly, I did not choose Eco­nom­ics. Eco­nom­ics chose me. I end­ed up tak­ing Eco­nom­ics at A lev­els be­cause French (which I re­al­ly want­ed to do) was clash­ing with Maths. Ini­tial­ly, I was not hap­py. But the uni­verse had a plan, clear­ly. I opened Eco­nom­ics by John Beard­shaw and fell hope­less­ly in love. Every­thing made sense. Eco­nom­ics has been my love and my life since.

Q: Ac­cord­ing to a 2020 in­ter­na­tion­al re­port, the glob­al share of fe­male chief econ­o­mists in bank­ing/eco­nom­ics stood around nine per cent. Al­so, on­ly two of the 92 No­bel lau­re­ates in eco­nom­ics have been women. Is this dis­ci­pline dom­i­nat­ed by men?

Maybe this is a first-world prob­lem be­cause when I think back to my time at the eco­nom­ics unit at Re­pub­lic Bank, we were all women and one man, Dr Ronald Ramkissoon. Then dur­ing my time at CMMB, we were a re­search team of five women. In the Caribbean, we are blessed with su­per-tal­ent­ed fe­male econ­o­mists, many of whom are my friends. I think maybe the women econ­o­mists in the Caribbean are prob­a­bly not as pub­licly vis­i­ble as the men, so most peo­ple don’t know they ex­ist. But trust me, the cen­tral banks, the min­istries of fi­nance and de­vel­op­ment, and the de­vel­op­ment banks across the re­gion are full of tal­ent­ed fe­male econ­o­mists. They are busy solv­ing prob­lems most peo­ple don’t even know ex­ist!

Q: What, in your opin­ion, is the most im­por­tant qual­i­ty in an econ­o­mist?

In­tegri­ty. You can lie with sta­tis­tics. You can ma­nip­u­late. You can mis­lead. I have seen in my coun­try and across the re­gion, econ­o­mists and politi­cians en­gag­ing in mis­in­for­ma­tion and spin­ning sto­ries ir­re­spec­tive of the facts and da­ta. It makes me sick.

Q: What skills in your skill set are most use­ful to you as an econ­o­mist?

Maybe a com­bi­na­tion of be­ing able to see link­ages and re­la­tion­ships be­tween things or events that may not be ob­vi­ous, and be­ing able to ex­plain eco­nom­ics and re­late to peo­ple all over, at dif­fer­ent lev­els. This is so im­por­tant be­cause if most peo­ple don’t un­der­stand what you are say­ing and why it is im­por­tant, you may be wast­ing your time and en­er­gy, and theirs.

Q: Share with us an eco­nom­ic fore­cast you made and how did the re­sults com­pare to your pre­dic­tions?

A very wise econ­o­mist friend of mine once told me that you can pre­dict an event or the tim­ing, but you can’t do both! Not fun but I pre­dict­ed the de­fault of Bar­ba­dos and Suri­name. I think the next most like­ly to de­fault in the Caribbean is The Ba­hamas. And, as I have said be­fore, if T&T con­tin­ues down a path of overde­pen­dence on oil and gas, fixed and over­val­ued ex­change rate, and Gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing, we could suf­fer the same fate.

The Gov­ern­ment has made some progress by re­mov­ing fu­el sub­si­dies, and re­duc­ing the over­all fis­cal deficit so bor­row­ing less, but there is so much they still need to fix. For the first nine months of last year, our coun­try lost US$2.7 bil­lion of pre­cious FX re­serves leav­ing our coun­try that no­body can ac­count for or ex­plain. This evap­o­ra­tion of our FX re­serves has to­taled US$24 bil­lion since 2011, but you don’t hear any­one talk­ing about this or ask­ing ques­tions.

When you look at the ra­tio of the mon­ey sup­ply to the lev­el of re­serves (mean­ing, how much US$ is back­ing our TT$) it is sup­posed to re­sem­ble the ex­change rate with a ‘soft cur­ren­cy’ like ours. In March of this year, that ra­tio was TT$14.87 to US$1 held in re­serve. This is more than TWICE the ex­change rate - more than dou­ble what it should be. This means there is mas­sive pres­sure on the ex­change rate, but it is be­ing ar­ti­fi­cial­ly kept fixed by the Gov­ern­ment and Cen­tral Bank, mean­ing that the au­thor­i­ties are heav­i­ly sub­si­dis­ing the sale of the US$, which be­long to the peo­ple of T&T.

The Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund be­longs to the peo­ple of T&T. The Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly re­port­ed on the poor per­for­mance of the HSF, which is one thing, but this hap­pened main­ly be­cause the peo­ple man­ag­ing the fund did not ad­here to the ap­proved in­vest­ment pol­i­cy. Apart from Afra Ray­mond, who is hold­ing the au­thor­i­ties to ac­count in this coun­try?

Q: Which glob­al trends will shape the world econ­o­my in the next ten years?

The cli­mate cri­sis will be the dom­i­nant theme, chang­ing the way we live, our qual­i­ty of life, our food, air qual­i­ty, tem­per­a­tures, cost of liv­ing, fer­til­i­ty, health, every­thing.

Pover­ty, hu­man de­vel­op­ment, and so­cial out­comes are suf­fer­ing in the Caribbean. We are large­ly not bet­ter off to­day from a well-be­ing stand­point than we were say 10-15 years ago, and this trend I think will con­tin­ue for some time.

I re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed a pa­per at Prince­ton show­ing that the coun­tries that are bet­ter off from a so­cial stand­point, from a hu­man de­vel­op­ment stand­point, are the non-sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ries. The British, Dutch, French ter­ri­to­ries gen­er­al­ly have high­er liv­ing stan­dards than we do. Some of that is based on the eco­nom­ic sup­port those states re­ceive from Eu­rope. And some of the un­der­per­for­mance we ex­pe­ri­ence in the sov­er­eign ju­ris­dic­tions is a di­rect ef­fect of de­lib­er­ate ef­forts at the hands of Eu­ro­peans, black­list­ing for ex­am­ple. But I feel it is im­por­tant to recog­nise that in many cas­es, our lead­ers in the in­de­pen­dent states post-in­de­pen­dence, have mis­man­aged our economies and caused se­vere hard­ship. For ex­am­ple, Ja­maica un­til about 2012, Guyana un­der Forbes Burn­ham in par­tic­u­lar, T&T es­pe­cial­ly post-2008, Bar­ba­dos un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, etc.

If our lead­ers con­tin­ue to mis­man­age our economies for ex­am­ple in T&T, Suri­name, The Ba­hamas, we will con­tin­ue to see de­te­ri­o­ra­tion. Peo­ple will con­tin­ue to leave un­less there is mas­sive pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tion..

Q: Fe­male leader/role mod­el: Who has in­spired you and why?

My moth­er and grand­moth­ers, my aun­ties - all the women who raised me - I know I can’t be­gin to un­der­stand the sac­ri­fices they have made for me to be here, do­ing what I do. And the army of women who sup­port me in my ca­reer, my chil­dren, and my par­ents. I couldn’t be do­ing what I do with­out them.

Q: What has been the most sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er in your ca­reer and to your suc­cess?

The same fate that so many women in this re­gion face, be­ing sin­gle moms or hav­ing un­sup­port­ive spous­es. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of house­hold and child-rear­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties fell on my shoul­ders, which led me to turn down some of the most amaz­ing ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties and to take four years off work to be a full-time at-home mom. But be­ing there full time for my chil­dren in their ear­ly years, (and rais­ing them sin­gle-hand­ed­ly since 2018), was price­less. I do not re­gret it at all. It cer­tain­ly made me ap­pre­ci­ate my ca­reer more, work hard­er, and take on chal­lenges that I may not oth­er­wise have. And I’m still stand­ing!

Be­ing a moth­er is the hard­est job in the world, and do­ing so full-time is ex­haust­ing. But it is the most im­por­tant job in the world. Every (work­ing) moth­er I know has had to make all kinds of sac­ri­fices for their chil­dren, in­clud­ing with our ca­reers. In­deed, glob­al­ly, women per­form 2-3 times more un­paid care work in the home than men do (for chil­dren and in­creas­ing­ly for el­der­ly par­ents). Could you imag­ine, if men shared the work­load at home equal­ly, what would hap­pen? We, women, would set this whole place on fire! And you know what? The men would ben­e­fit too! But they are not ready to talk about this.

Q: What is your de­f­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess?

My hap­pi­ness for­mu­la is 96 per cent peace and four per cent some­thing to be ex­cit­ed about. And for me, peace is com­prised of:

Free­dom: To be able to wake up every morn­ing and do what­ev­er lights you up.

Good health: be­cause with­out this, noth­ing else re­al­ly mat­ters.

Mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships: shar­ing, sup­port, love, and friend­ship.

Suc­cess for me is the ex­tent to which you have the above.

Q: What would you do dif­fer­ent­ly if giv­en a chance?

I would nev­er have dyed my grey hair! I wish I wor­ried less about con­form­ing. About pleas­ing. I would have dared to be even more ME and do what I want­ed to do even more, even soon­er, and not fo­cus on what was ex­pect­ed of me.

Q: Any per­son­al mot­to or cre­do?

What­ev­er you do, comes back to you. And when it comes back, it comes back hard­er. So, be care­ful what you put out there. And do your best, every day.