Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said T&T is “far be­hind” the fourth in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion which is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place.

“T&T has to find ways to catch up and we need to look at strength­en­ing our var­i­ous ecosys­tems hence the rea­son why mi­cro and small busi­ness­es are so im­por­tant,” the min­is­ter said dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), the pri­vate sec­tor, state en­ter­pris­es and the Gov­ern­ment at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel on Mon­day.

And ac­cord­ing to Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, UWI Vice Chan­cel­lor, a short­age of skilled labour has been linked to the slug­gish re­sponse of the econ­o­my.

Cou­pled with this, he said, is the lack of an align­ment be­tween the re­search and pro­duc­tion sys­tems and the pol­i­cy frame­work of the State re­gard­ing tax in­cen­tives.

Beck­les urged that the years of re­search which was com­piled by UWI must be trans­ferred in mean­ing­ful ways.

Not­ing that the re­gion is cur­rent­ly at the bot­tom of the lad­der re­gard­ing eco­nom­ic growth, Beck­les said, “We have the en­er­gy be­cause we are try­ing so hard to grow the re­gion but we are not get­ting the re­sults be­cause the align­ment is not right.

“We have the low­est of our young peo­ple in high­er ed­u­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al train­ing. We are at the bot­tom of our hemi­sphere with our young peo­ple in any uni­ver­si­ties.”

He said the en­tre­pre­neurs and re­search pro­fes­sors were al­so “not talk­ing to each oth­er every sin­gle day.”

This is crit­i­cal es­pe­cial­ly in fo­rum-like com­mit­tees to dri­ve strate­gic plans for­ward, Beck­les said.