Raphael John-Lall

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Garvin Heer­ah be­lieves that For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment (FDI) and tourism ar­rivals to T&T could be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed giv­en the bad press that T&T has re­ceived in re­cent days, since Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) to deal with T&T’s spi­ralling crime rate.

The Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom (UK), and Cana­da are among coun­tries that have is­sued trav­el ad­vi­sories to their cit­i­zens af­ter the de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency in T&T.

In its ad­vi­so­ry dat­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, the US Em­bassy said Amer­i­can cit­i­zens in this coun­try should ex­pect an in­creased po­lice and mil­i­tary pres­ence.

On the Gov.UK web­site, the gov­ern­ment of the UK ad­vised its cit­i­zens that dur­ing the State of Emer­gency in T&T, se­cu­ri­ty forces can search peo­ple and prop­er­ty with­out a war­rant, ar­rest and de­tain with­out a war­rant. The UK gov­ern­ment al­so ad­vised its cit­i­zens to ex­pect height­ened po­lice and mil­i­tary pres­ence and to al­ways car­ry their ID and com­ply with lo­cal au­thor­i­ties.

Sim­i­lar ad­vice was giv­en to Cana­di­an cit­i­zens via the trav­el.gc.ca web­site.

The Ja­maican ex­pe­ri­ence of bat­tling a high mur­der rate and im­prov­ing its econ­o­my is a use­ful ex­am­ple of the im­por­tance of a low crime rate in at­tract­ing FDI, an­a­lysts told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

The Unit­ed States’ State De­part­ment’s web­page on Ja­maica gives de­tails of the work Ja­maica has done in re­cent years to bring down the crime rate and to in­crease FDI.

“To sus­tain the reaped eco­nom­ic gains, the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica con­tin­ues to take mea­sures to im­prove the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion (with one of the high­est mur­der rates in the world) and to mit­i­gate the risk of nat­ur­al cat­a­stro­phes, which re­main hin­drances to FDI,” the State De­part­ment’s web­page stat­ed.

Heer­ah said for­eign in­vestors read­ing the news about T&T’s SoE, and the strug­gle to deal with vi­o­lent crime, could po­ten­tial­ly change their minds about in­vest­ing in T&T.

“FDI is dri­ven by in­vestor con­fi­dence, and one of its key pre­req­ui­sites is a sta­ble and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment. The cur­rent nar­ra­tive, am­pli­fied by the SoE, paints a pic­ture of in­sta­bil­i­ty that could de­ter po­ten­tial in­vestors. For busi­ness­es al­ready op­er­at­ing in T&T, there may be con­cerns about op­er­a­tional risks, sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, and em­ploy­ee safe­ty. These fac­tors could lead to a re­con­sid­er­a­tion of fu­ture in­vest­ments or even di­vest­ments.”

He said do­mes­ti­cal­ly, the econ­o­my could suf­fer as a re­sult of re­strict­ed move­ments, re­duced com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, and height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures as busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, are like­ly to feel the strain of re­duced cus­tomer ac­tiv­i­ty and height­ened se­cu­ri­ty costs.

He al­so spoke about the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia’s neg­a­tive cov­er­age of T&T and how this might im­pact tourist ar­rivals to T&T.

“The is­suance of trav­el ad­vi­sories by ma­jor coun­tries such as the US, UK, and Cana­da, fol­low­ing the SoE de­c­la­ra­tion, is a clear in­di­ca­tion that the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion in T&T. Trav­el ad­vi­sories of­ten lead to a sharp de­cline in tourist ar­rivals, par­tic­u­lar­ly as po­ten­tial vis­i­tors per­ceive the coun­try as un­safe. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing giv­en the vi­tal role tourism plays in di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my and gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change.”

He said ad­di­tion­al­ly, the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia’s cov­er­age of the SoE, as a re­sponse to es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence, fur­ther tar­nish­es the na­tion’s rep­u­ta­tion.

“While do­mes­tic au­di­ences may un­der­stand the ne­ces­si­ty of the SoE, in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers may view it as ev­i­dence of sys­temic in­sta­bil­i­ty, gov­er­nance chal­lenges and a fail­ure to ad­dress the root caus­es of crim­i­nal­i­ty ef­fec­tive­ly.”

De­spite the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive fall out from the SoE be­cause of the grow­ing in­sta­bil­i­ty in T&T, he said that the SoE is a nec­es­sary and im­me­di­ate mea­sure to ad­dress the alarm­ing es­ca­la­tion of crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly vi­o­lent homi­cides, that has gripped the na­tion.

“While the in­ten­tion is to re­store law and or­der, such a de­ci­sion in­evitably comes with far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ar­eas of tourism FDI and the per­cep­tion of na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.”

Her­rah re­mains op­ti­mistic that T&T can emerge with a stronger econ­o­my and a sta­ble so­cial sys­tem once the right poli­cies are car­ried out.

“The de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency is a stark re­minder of the chal­lenges T&T faces. How­ev­er, it al­so presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate re­silience and re­solve. By lever­ag­ing this mo­ment to im­ple­ment de­ci­sive, trans­par­ent, and sus­tain­able strate­gies, the coun­try can emerge stronger, en­sur­ing that the short-term mea­sures tak­en now pave the way for long-term se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. T&T stands at a cross­roads. The world is watch­ing. It is now the time for bold lead­er­ship, na­tion­al uni­ty, and a com­mit­ment to re­build­ing trust—lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les said the SoE could have a neg­a­tive im­pact on FDI and vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

“With­out doubt, an SOE will make po­ten­tial vis­i­tors and in­vestors think twice be­fore com­ing to T&T. If the for­eign in­vest­ment is very prof­itable, the in­vestor may still come af­ter an as­sess­ment of the risks. Vis­i­tors will wait a while to see how the sit­u­a­tion evolves. If the mur­der rate is seen as de­clin­ing af­ter the SOE, this could cre­ate a more favourable at­ti­tude to­wards the coun­try. The over­all dam­age to the econ­o­my will be lim­it­ed by the length of the SOE and the ex­tent to which crime is re­duced dur­ing it.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said the SoE will not make much of a dif­fer­ence in stop­ping the es­ca­lat­ing crime rate, as the ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing the pan­dem­ic showed.

“The abid­ing les­son of the mur­der re­al­i­ty of 2020 is that le­gal re­stric­tions on move­ment and mo­bil­i­ty do not stop the ac­tiv­i­ty of the sicar­ios (well-trained as­sas­sins). The sicar­ios op­er­at­ing in T&T are not gang bangers, they are well trained, dis­ci­plined pro­fes­sion­als.”

He added that an SoE un­der T&T’s Re­pub­li­can con­sti­tu­tion was not framed to deal with Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime (TOC) in all its man­i­fes­ta­tions in the third decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

“In T&T to­day, you have two TOC mod­els op­er­a­tional­ly present in T&T at war with each oth­er and a state ap­pa­ra­tus com­pro­mised by cor­rup­tion and in­sti­tu­tion­al in­er­tia, which means it is not fit for pur­pose in this en­vi­ron­ment. The Caribbean is­land chain is to­day sub­merged by a tsuna­mi of co­caine be­ing traf­ficked by the Colom­bian TOC to Eu­rope in a des­per­ate last minute bid to save its busi­ness mod­el from ex­tinc­tion.”

He then spoke about how this will im­pact on T&T’s busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment and econ­o­my.

“This is a down­ward spi­ral which im­pacts the short-and long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty dri­ving many to bank­rupt­cy. The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has then to pre­pare for hard times by re­duc­ing its short and long-term debt and the stock it is car­ry­ing, in­crease its in­sur­ance and se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age and cut costs to the bone. This is now sur­vival mode not an ex­pan­sion­ary en­vi­ron­ment.”