T&T Pa­tri­ots

Through­out his­to­ry, the struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion of so­ci­eties has de­pend­ed on am­bi­tious pro­grammes of pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment. The chal­lenge is that the glob­al track record has not been good in project se­lec­tion and ex­e­cu­tion. T&T has its fair share of aban­doned or sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­layed and over­bud­get projects over the last 25 years which in­clude: the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Wa­ter­front Project, Tamana In­tec Park, Beetham Waste­water Project, Cou­va Med­ical Fa­cil­i­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty Of The West In­dies South Cam­pus (Pe­nal/Debe), Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty, Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion, Shi­va Boys’ & Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­leges (Pe­nal), Ca­roni fu­el fa­cil­i­ty, Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, Red House re­fur­bish­ment, Solomon Ho­choy high­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin and the Pres­i­dent’s Cot­tage.

A key les­son learned is that once a project spans be­yond the term of one po­lit­i­cal par­ty there is a cy­cle of in­ves­ti­ga­tions for cor­rup­tion, sus­pen­sion of ac­tiv­i­ty and a lack of in­ter­est of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion in mov­ing the project for­ward to com­ple­tion. We have oth­er sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­tures on trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives that didn’t re­quire an in­vest­ment in as­sets which have al­so gone through the same cy­cle.

One could ar­gue that over the last 25 years bil­lions of dol­lars have been spent, none of which have added any val­ue for the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. No gov­ern­ment in the his­to­ry of T&T has been im­mune from the bad and ug­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the ad­vance­ment of am­bi­tious trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes of pub­lic in­vest­ment.

We now have the an­nounce­ment with a lot of fan­fare of a suite of large projects un­der the name “Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print” which will re­quire bil­lions of dol­lars of USD in in­vest­ment. It is not clear what as­pects will be ful­ly Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GORTT) projects, pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships (PPPs) and pure­ly pri­vate sec­tor through lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors. Like­ly most will have to be PPPs or pure­ly pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ments as the cur­rent fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion af­fords lit­tle ca­pac­i­ty for ad­di­tion­al GORTT debt.

What we ab­solute­ly don’t want is more of the same as oc­curred over the last 25 years. To do that will re­quire more sub­stan­tial as­sur­ances than – trust us, we will al­ways do what is nec­es­sary to as­sure that best val­ue is pro­vid­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

There are abun­dant sources of in­for­ma­tion on lessons learned from past fail­ures as well as in­ter­na­tion­al fail­ures. Of course, lessons learned are use­less if they are ig­nored or re­viewed and dis­count­ed with an over-con­fi­dence bias. One of the hall­marks for con­sis­tent de­liv­ery of val­ue from in­vest­ment is the qual­i­ty of the process­es for se­lec­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of the projects. The max­im – think slow, act fast, is one that would serve us very well.

Let’s start at the be­gin­ning.

Is the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print a vi­sion state­ment or a de­tailed road map? A road map is some­thing that is suf­fi­cient­ly re­searched, an­a­lyzed, test­ed and de­tailed that we can be very con­fi­dent that it will get us to where we need to go. Per­haps there are de­tails that are yet to be pro­vid­ed that will as­sure the pop­u­la­tion that the iden­ti­fied op­por­tu­ni­ties have been suf­fi­cient­ly re­searched, an­a­lyzed, and test­ed. What would be help­ful to get the pop­u­la­tion’s buy-in is mak­ing such de­tails avail­able through the rel­e­vant Min­istry or al­ter­na­tive­ly it could be pre­sent­ed through a na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion process.

For ex­am­ple, let’s take the Port City, a pre­mier 400-acre port with a 4 mil­lion TEU/year ca­pac­i­ty and dry dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties for four 300 m post Pana­max ves­sels. That cer­tain­ly will re­quire a pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty study to see if that is pos­si­ble. The Caribbean Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion in 2023 ranked T&T’s ports as two of the top 25 at num­ber 13 and 15 spots with a com­bined ca­pac­i­ty in TEU/year of 533,000 TEU/yr. The top port is Pana­ma with a ca­pac­i­ty of 4.8 mil­lion TEU/yr. Cer­tain­ly the re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion is very fierce and T&T’s Port City am­bi­tion of 4 mil­lion TEU/year seems ex­treme­ly am­bi­tious. Ac­cess to the work done on the pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty study would be very help­ful for the pop­u­la­tion to share that am­bi­tion.

As an­oth­er ex­am­ple, let’s take the pre­mier fi­nan­cial dis­trict, 600,000 sq ft of of­fice space sur­round­ed by 300,000 sq ft of high-end re­tail space. Both the PNM and the PP gov­ern­ments tried to es­tab­lish the Trinidad and To­ba­go as an In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) cir­ca 2008 and be­yond de­spite the on­go­ing glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis and its many ca­su­al­ties. The idea was to ex­port fi­nan­cial ser­vices to the world on a com­pet­i­tive ba­sis and fur­ther di­ver­si­fy the T&T econ­o­my away from en­er­gy.

Econ­o­mist, and for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran in 2008 wrote in the Trinidad Guardian that such an am­bi­tion was in­deed very lofty and list­ed the fol­low­ing as crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors:

* An ex­ten­sive net­work of fi­nan­cial firms with cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment client con­nec­tions across the world;

* A high-lev­el hu­man cap­i­tal base spe­cialised in quan­ti­ta­tive fi­nance, sup­port­ed by a nu­mer­ate, para­pro­fes­sion­al labour force;

* A world-class telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture with con­nec­tiv­i­ty around the clock and around the world;

* A state-of-the-art IT sys­tem and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to main­tain and man­age the IT in­fra­struc­ture of glob­al fi­nan­cial firms, trad­ing plat­forms and reg­u­la­tors;

* A well-de­vel­oped, so­phis­ti­cat­ed, open fi­nan­cial sys­tem with pro­fi­cient, liq­uid mar­kets in all seg­ments—eq­ui­ties, bonds, com­modi­ties, cur­ren­cies, and de­riv­a­tives; and

*A sys­tem of fi­nan­cial regime gov­er­nance that op­er­ates along glob­al “best-prac­tice” lines.

Up­grade Port-of-Spain’s ur­ban in­fra­struc­ture.

Port of Spain has to be seen as a cos­mopoli­tan me­trop­o­lis that em­braces work­ers from every­where with lifestyle fa­cil­i­ties (health, ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, sports, en­ter­tain­ment) man­aged up to world stan­dards and cater­ing to glob­al tastes.

The ques­tion is, if all the above are re­quired to get a tick­et to the game to be an in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial cen­ter (IFC), have they been ad­dressed and are we now ready for in­vest­ment in build­ings for a fi­nan­cial dis­trict? Again, it comes down to hav­ing the as­sur­ance that each op­por­tu­ni­ty to be ad­vanced is suf­fi­cient­ly re­searched, an­a­lyzed, test­ed and de­tailed. The same log­ic ap­plies for all of the list­ed projects. We can­not af­ford to waste time and mon­ey on bad choic­es. Good choic­es re­quire a ro­bust process of re­search, analy­sis, and test­ing.

Oth­er coun­tries that have made sig­nif­i­cant mis­takes in the past have ad­dressed the se­lec­tion process by es­tab­lish­ing in­de­pen­dent agen­cies to pro­vide a gate­keep­er of pub­lic in­vest­ment pro­cure­ment by en­hanc­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and trans­paren­cy of pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment man­age­ment. Role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the in­de­pen­dent gate­keep­er agency in­cludes the fol­low­ing which is tak­en from the Glob­al In­fra­struc­ture Hub:

* Ear­ly-stage pipeline screen­ing and pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty as­sess­ment:

--Im­ple­ment struc­tured process­es and guide­lines for ear­ly-stage screen­ing, project iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and scop­ing; and

--Cre­ate in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port for in­de­pen­dent un­bi­ased pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies and ear­ly-stage project eval­u­a­tion.

* Rigour in fea­si­bil­i­ty eval­u­a­tion

--This step in­volves a de­tailed eval­u­a­tion of the project’s fea­si­bil­i­ty.

--Tools such as the World Bank’s PPP Project Screen­ing Tool can help in build­ing com­pre­hen­sive­ness of eval­u­a­tion and suit­abil­i­ty for im­ple­men­ta­tion us­ing the PPP mod­el of pro­cure­ment.

--In­te­grate com­pre­hen­sive Val­ue-for-Mon­ey analy­ses in­to over­all pub­lic in­vest­ment plan­ning.

* Pe­ri­od­ic re­view and ap­provals: Mech­a­nisms to con­sis­tent­ly build ro­bust project re­views and ap­praisals in a mul­ti-stage man­ner can help to avoid miss­ing key re­quire­ments ear­ly on and get­ting blind­sided by chal­lenges lat­er in the project prepa­ra­tion process. The fol­low­ing el­e­ments should be built in­to project re­views.

--Im­ple­ment­ing well-de­fined and time-bound work flows to bal­ance rigour and ef­fi­cien­cy con­sid­er­a­tions;

--Em­bed­ding a process au­dit in­to project prepa­ra­tion to build trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy; and

--En­sur­ing that key stake­hold­ers are in­volved dur­ing project prepa­ra­tion and re­views.

The Pub­lic and Pri­vate In­fra­struc­ture In­vest­ment Man­age­ment Cen­ter (PI­MAC) of South Ko­rea is seen glob­al­ly as a bench­mark in­sti­tu­tion for pro­vid­ing this crit­i­cal gate­keep­er func­tion. Per­haps the GORTT can ask the South Ko­re­an gov­ern­ment, or an­oth­er coun­try with sim­i­lar bench­mark cal­i­bRE, for help in es­tab­lish­ing a sim­i­lar in­sti­tu­tion/agency. This ac­tion could be a gamechang­er to avoid the mis­takes of the past in se­lect­ing the right projects to ad­vance.

T&T Pa­tri­ots is a pseu­do­nym for an ex­pe­ri­enced project man­ag­er, who does not want his name to de­tract from his ideas