An­drea Perez-Sobers

Fix­ing is­sues that have ex­ist­ed in the yacht­ing in­dus­try for over 25 years is some­thing that whichev­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty comes in­to gov­ern­ment on April 28 must se­ri­ous­ly ad­dress for it to be a for­eign ex­change earn­er once again.

That’s ac­cord­ing to Ma­rine Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MSATT) pres­i­dent Jesse James.

James was com­ment­ing on the two man­i­festos by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on the yacht­ing and ma­rine sec­tor.

The UNC said the glob­al recre­ation­al boat­ing in­dus­try is a high-growth mar­ket, val­ued at over $29 bil­lion in 2022 and pro­ject­ed to reach $42 bil­lion by 2028.  

The man­i­festo out­lined that this in­dus­try is ex­pand­ing rapid­ly due to in­creas­ing de­mand for yacht ser­vices, lux­u­ry trav­el, and ma­rine tourism and T&T has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tap in­to this mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar sec­tor by pro­vid­ing world-class yacht main­te­nance, re­pair, and boat-build­ing ser­vices.

Al­so, the UNC man­i­festo in­di­cat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 yachts tran­sit through the Caribbean, with a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber pass­ing near or through T&T’s wa­ters.  

“These ves­sels re­quire es­sen­tial main­te­nance, re­fu­elling, and re­pairs, cre­at­ing a mas­sive eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty. By po­si­tion­ing it­self as the pre­ferred yacht­ing ser­vice hub in the re­gion, this coun­try can at­tract high-val­ue clients and gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial for­eign ex­change earn­ings,” it stat­ed.

The PNM looked at ad­vanced mar­itime trans­for­ma­tion and the green ma­rine econ­o­my eco­port Ex­pan­sion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Ex­tend the LABID­CO Eco­Port mod­el to strate­gic na­tion­al ports.

The man­i­festo spoke about in­te­grat­ing re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems, en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient in­fra­struc­ture, and en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance stan­dards to achieve in­ter­na­tion­al Eco­Port cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, re­duce car­bon emis­sions, and en­hance glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness in ship­ping and lo­gis­tics.

James, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, said while both man­i­festos are good, the re­al­i­ty is who­ev­er gets in­to pow­er come April 29 needs to sit down with the agen­cies that deal with the sec­tor and fix all the is­sues that have plagued the in­dus­try for decades.

“This pussy­foot­ing, drag­ging on for 25, I am in busi­ness 27 years now. It’s the same is­sues we’re fac­ing over and over, and I’ve seen Caribbean is­lands overnight rec­ti­fied prob­lems, and we’re still fight­ing, you know, with the same things for 27-plus years,” James lament­ed.

He said while Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, who is the sec­tor’s line min­is­ter has cham­pi­oned and saw the vi­sion, it is still fight­ing the same bat­tles.

James stressed that MSATT has been tire­less­ly cham­pi­oning the Sin­gle Har­mo­nized form, which is an elec­tron­ic means of clear­ing the yachts that come in­to the shores and all Caribbean is­lands have im­ple­ment­ed, as an ease of do­ing busi­ness.

“These is­lands do not have oil and gas, but they’re way ahead of us in those kinds of things. But we’re still try­ing to get the ball go­ing and rolling to fa­cil­i­tate the for­eign vis­i­tors and cruis­ers. As long as we are not work­ing to­geth­er with the var­i­ous agen­cies to make the ease of do­ing busi­ness, we are los­ing out big time. I mean, this has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics, or which par­ty gets in the agen­cies, must change their mind­sets to move for­ward,” a pas­sion­ate James said.

This sec­tor, he re­it­er­at­ed, is a low-hang­ing fruit to be a for­eign ex­change earn­er, which the coun­try is in dire need of.  

“A lot of the is­lands, the cruis­ers tell me face-to-face, there’s no ma­jor set of is­sues in get­ting U.S. dol­lars from the banks, If we are talk­ing about di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my this sec­tor must be in­clud­ed,” he dis­closed.

TTC­SI on man­i­festos

 The T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) rep­re­sents both the yacht­ing and ma­rine sec­tors and its pres­i­dent Di­anne Joseph said in look­ing at both PNM and UNC’s man­i­festo it not­ed that note that the PNM is seek­ing,, to strength­en the work that they have al­ready start­ed to strate­gi­cal­ly trans­form the mar­itime sec­tor and build a high-per­for­mance mar­itime econ­o­my that sup­ports trade, strength­ens the en­er­gy val­ue chain and re­duced en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.  

The UNC on the oth­er hand Joseph not­ed is fo­cus­ing up­on, among oth­er ar­eas, the glob­al recre­ation­al boat­ing in­dus­try as a high-growth mar­ket with op­por­tu­ni­ties to tap in­to it as a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar sec­tor by pro­vid­ing world-class yacht main­te­nance, re­pair, and boat-build­ing ser­vices.  

“They are al­so of the view that this can cre­ate a mas­sive eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty and thus cre­ate for­eign ex­change earn­ings. We agree that both sce­nar­ios will serve to boost for­eign ex­change but this is not like­ly to sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pare with that of the en­er­gy sec­tor,” she out­lined.

Based on the da­ta avail­able, Joseph said the TTC­SI thinks that both par­ties are aim­ing in the right di­rec­tion, but it is im­por­tant for the par­ty that will lead this coun­try for the next five years to con­sid­er build­ing or im­prov­ing up­on the al­ready es­tab­lished in­fra­struc­ture giv­en the fact that a lot of work would have al­ready gone in­to the con­duct of da­ta gath­er­ing and im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies to strength­en both sec­tors.  

“Any at­tempt to ‘re-in­vent the wheel’ may be con­sid­ered a step in the wrong di­rec­tion as it may serve to de­lay sys­tems and poli­cies that have been re­cent­ly es­tab­lished or the slow­ing of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of those that are about to be im­ple­ment­ed. If this hap­pens, it may af­fect our mem­bers and re­tard progress. The ben­e­fits to our peo­ple and the econ­o­my must be kept up­per­most in the minds of those who will lead us for the next five years,” Joseph ex­plained.

She high­light­ed that ar­eas to boost the ex­port po­ten­tial of the sec­tor may in­clude:

Im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies that of­fer in­cen­tives for in­vest­ment in mar­itime in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy can at­tract more in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness;

en­sur­ing that reg­u­la­tions are favourable and aligned with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards can en­hance the sec­tor’s ap­peal to glob­al clients; con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in up­grad­ing mar­itime and yacht­ing in­fra­struc­ture will im­prove ser­vice qual­i­ty and at­tract more clients; ex­pand­ing train­ing pro­grams and part­ner­ships with in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions can fur­ther en­hance the skills of the lo­cal work­force and make them in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive and strength­en­ing mar­ket­ing cam­paigns to pro­mote T&T as a pre­mier mar­itime and yacht­ing des­ti­na­tion can at­tract more in­ter­na­tion­al clients.

Joseph high­light­ed that MSATT has long ad­vo­cat­ed for many of the above ar­eas.  

Since the port and mar­itime ecosys­tem is go­ing to change con­sid­er­ably in the com­ing decades, she sug­gest­ed that de­ci­sion-mak­ers re­quire a Vi­sion of 2030 to pri­ori­tise in­vest­ments and build a strate­gic plan.  

This strate­gic plan Joseph said must con­tain clear strate­gies to be em­ployed to si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­duce crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in the coun­try.  

“A fail­ure to do so will af­fect the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the best plans to take the coun­try for­ward.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Joseph said that the MTI in its fi­nal draft re­port of the Mar­itime Pol­i­cy and Strat­e­gy of Ju­ly 2021 has iden­ti­fied the mar­itime sec­tor as one of the key na­tion­al eco­nom­ic ar­eas, with the mar­itime sec­tor en­com­pass­ing ma­rine trans­porta­tion and ship­ping, safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty, tourism, the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment, and re­lat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tion and leg­is­la­tion.  

She added that T&T’s ocean-based econ­o­my (blue econ­o­my) is es­ti­mat­ed to be worth US$22.5 bil­lion or 81 per cent of the coun­try’s to­tal GDP (2015).