GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

To­ba­go plays an in­stru­men­tal role in this coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, with tourism be­ing a key fac­tor.

With the ush­er­ing in of the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar led ad­min­is­tra­tion, stake­hold­ers are ea­ger to chart a way for­ward for the sec­tor.

To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man, at­tor­ney Mar­tin George is call­ing up­on the new gov­ern­ment to ini­ti­ate the “im­me­di­ate and un­con­di­tion­al re­peal” of the For­eign In­vest­ment Act which the cham­ber has been cham­pi­oning for many years.

“That act is what has sti­fled and crip­pled all di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment in­to To­ba­go and as a re­sult, per­sons have tak­en their in­vest­ments else­where. All the oth­er Caribbean is­lands have ben­e­fit­ted from it, in­clud­ing St Kitts, St Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca, Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent. So every­body else has ben­e­fit­ed.

“Why are we not ben­e­fit­ing, es­pe­cial­ly when our coun­try, our na­tion is in a for­eign ex­change cri­sis? Why are you sti­fling and stop­ping di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment? That for­eign ex­change in­vest­ed in To­ba­go is go­ing to ben­e­fit every­body be­cause cer­tain­ly the ma­jor­i­ty of the goods, ser­vices, the pro­fes­sion­als for any project in To­ba­go that a for­eign­er is in­vest­ing in, they will come from Trinidad. Trinidad will ben­e­fit too. There’s ben­e­fit all around to the re­peal of that leg­is­la­tion,” George ex­plained to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

The Act pro­vides for the ac­qui­si­tion of any in­ter­est in land or shares in lo­cal pri­vate or pub­lic com­pa­nies and for the for­ma­tion of com­pa­nies by for­eign in­vestors and al­so to fa­cil­i­tate in­vest­ment by cit­i­zens of Cari­com mem­ber states and for mat­ters in­ci­den­tal there­to. T&T’s For­eign In­vest­ment Act re­quires all for­eign­ers ac­quir­ing land in the twin-is­land na­tion to ap­ply for a li­cence.

George is al­so urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the San­dals Group to de­ter­mine if some­thing ac­cept­able could be worked out for all par­ties to en­able San­dals to build its two ho­tels in the sis­ter isle.

On oth­er plans for the ho­tel sec­tor, George is al­so en­cour­ag­ing the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to look at oth­er ma­jor ho­tel play­ers such as the Mar­riott brand, the Hy­att brand, and even the Hilton brand if nec­es­sary.

“We need to get more ma­jor ho­tels in­to To­ba­go be­cause we have a brand new air­port which has a ca­pac­i­ty of three mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year. But if we don’t have the ho­tels for peo­ple to stay and if we don’t have the flights and the air­lift to at­tract them, then the air­port is go­ing to end up be­ing a white ele­phant and no­body would want that,” George ad­vised.

He em­pha­sised these are some of the “big tick­et items” to be dis­cussed, adding that the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber has al­so ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to meet with the new gov­ern­ment at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“If they want to come to To­ba­go, we will be hap­py to host them. If they want us to come down to Port-of -Spain, we’ll be hap­py to do so. Wher­ev­er they need to meet, we will do so just to en­sure that we get things mov­ing and get things done,” George stressed.

Man­i­festo promis­es

Where does To­ba­go go from here?

What and how will the vic­to­ry de­liv­er?

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James who said the elec­tion was read as pro­vid­ing To­ba­go with a strong ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tion with the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad.

Ne­go­ti­at­ing for what?

Sum­mar­i­ly, “au­ton­o­my,” he said.

“On the read­ing of the record and the vic­to­ry speech­es, could it be ex­pect­ed that the heady vic­to­ry over Row­ley will lead to sober think­ing about a prop­er re­design of the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance to bring an end to au­thor­i­tar­i­an rule and ush­er in an era of joint de­ci­sion-mak­ing with the pub­lic?

“The most ba­sic foun­da­tion of our fail­ure to make progress in elec­tion af­ter elec­tion is a fail­ure to set up our gov­ern­ment prop­er­ly. Yet, Kam­la’s vic­to­ry speech shed no light on that. Far­ley promised bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion with Trinidad and more suc­cess with au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, but that pro­vides no se­ri­ous clues about how the na­tion­al in­ter­est will be served while de­liv­er­ing such au­ton­o­my,” James said.

Chair­man of T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, Cur­tis Williams, al­so agreed that To­ba­go has long ad­vo­cat­ed for greater au­ton­o­my and a more eq­ui­table share of the na­tion­al bud­get—one that re­flects the is­land’s unique de­vel­op­ment needs and as­pi­ra­tions.

He urged the new Gov­ern­ment to en­gage with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in mean­ing­ful di­a­logue to­ward se­cur­ing a greater per­cent­age of fis­cal al­lo­ca­tions which would en­able them to de­liv­er ef­fec­tive­ly on lo­cal pri­or­i­ties.

On oth­er mat­ters of the econ­o­my, James said the oth­er cru­cial ques­tion is how would the pro­ject­ed move­ment for­ward be fi­nanced in the light of the planned de­mands by the mem­bers of the “coali­tion of in­ter­est.”

He said re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery, for in­stance, would cost a lot, if not a for­tune in terms of lost op­por­tu­ni­ty to change trad­ing pat­terns.

“Signs are that or­gan­ised labour in the ranks of the coali­tion will want as much as a 10 per cent pay in­crease, suit­ably retroac­tive. On all read­able sig­nals from the past, the THA will de­mand more in terms of its share of the na­tion­al bud­get, some say up to 10 per cent across the board de­spite the col­lapse of the To­ba­go econ­o­my un­der Far­ley.

“The coali­tion of in­ter­est is al­so of­fer­ing a big bas­ket of hand­outs to all oth­er in­ter­ests. Every­body wants more, so to speak, but the pie has been shrink­ing in size, if the 23 per cent col­lapse of the na­tion­al per capi­ta in­come un­der Row­ley is in­clud­ed in the reck­on­ing. And, there are gen­uine chal­lenges in the en­er­gy sec­tor. So, how is the col­lec­tive largesse to be fi­nanced?” James fur­ther asked.

He ad­vised that the coun­try would be well-ad­vised to search for prop­er an­swers to such ques­tions, even as it en­joys the “eu­pho­ria over the de­feat of Row­ley and his ver­sion of au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment.”

Williams added that as the new ad­min­is­tra­tion be­gins its work, one of its first or­ders of busi­ness ought to be do­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

He said he un­der­stood that while sev­er­al promis­es were made dur­ing the cam­paign, the re­al­i­ties of the na­tion­al fis­cal po­si­tion may lim­it the im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion of some ini­tia­tives.

Side­bar

In its elec­tion man­i­festo the UNC-which did not go in­to de­tails- said it in­tend­ed to col­lab­o­rate with the THA and the To­ba­go tourism sec­tor to en­sure sus­tain­able, co­or­di­nat­ed de­vel­op­ment.

“Our man­i­festo promis­es im­proved tourism, trans­port in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment tai­lored to To­ba­go’s unique po­ten­tial. We aim to em­pow­er the peo­ple of To­ba­go through lo­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ing and bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es and youth. To­geth­er, we will build a stronger, more in­de­pen­dent To­ba­go that con­tributes ful­ly to the na­tion’s suc­cess,” it stat­ed.