GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

In its eco­nom­ic tra­jec­to­ry, T&T has done “very well” thus far.

This from chief econ­o­mist and di­rec­tor for eco­nom­ics and eval­u­a­tion di­rec­torate in the Unit­ed King­dom’s For­eign, Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice (FC­DO) Pro­fes­sor Ad­nan Khan who was re­cent­ly en­gaged in a two-day vis­it with this coun­try on the in­vi­ta­tion by the British High Com­mis­sion in Port-of-Spain.

Khan, who vis­it­ed T&T for the first time, shared his in­sights in fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­no­va­tion and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment with T&T as he spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian be­fore he left last Thurs­day and on why he came to T&T.

“To learn about the ex­pe­ri­ence of the coun­try, its eco­nom­ic tra­jec­to­ry, the next step in its eco­nom­ic tra­jec­to­ry. T&T has done very well so far in terms of qual­i­ty of hu­man cap­i­tal, bet­ter util­is­ing its nat­ur­al re­sources and many oth­er things,” he said.

Now, this coun­try has to go to the next stage, Khan added.

“And I’m here to help from the pri­vate sec­tor, to the Gov­ern­ment to acad­e­mia and oth­ers about how they see the chal­lenges,” Khan ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he made it clear that he was not giv­ing ad­vice as the “ul­ti­mate agency” for do­ing so lies with the cit­i­zens and pol­i­cy­mak­ers here, as it does else­where in the world.

“I am not in the busi­ness of giv­ing ad­vice...all I can do is share, if asked, about the ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­er coun­tries, what lessons do I draw up­on. I can say coun­tries which have gone through the next stage of de­vel­op­ment have made the in­vest­ments that are need­ed to take them to the next lev­el,” Khan said.

Draw­ing on his ex­pe­ri­ences and lessons he ac­quired from the past 30 years in work­ing in oth­er coun­tries, Khan ex­plained, “In­vest­ments in hu­man cap­i­tal, in­vest­ing in peo­ple, cre­at­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the pri­vate sec­tor, un­der­tak­ing dif­fi­cult re­forms, re­forms that maybe painful for the coun­try in the short­er run but are need­ed in the longer run.”

On the is­sue of re­new­able en­er­gy and how can T&T place more em­pha­sis in this area, while still main­tain­ing its pres­ence as an im­por­tant oil ans gas econ­o­my, Khan agreed that re­new­ables re­main a promis­ing in­dus­try for this coun­try be­cause of their var­i­ous en­dow­ments.

“Whether it is hy­dro­gen, so­lar or wind, they are huge po­ten­tials for this coun­try. These are al­so ar­eas where the UK Gov­ern­ment is al­ready co-op­er­at­ing with the au­thor­i­ties, pol­i­cy­mak­ers in some of these ar­eas. If there is the po­ten­tial to co-op­er­ate more we are hap­py to do that. I think that is the next stage for this coun­try to in­vest in re­new­able green en­er­gy be­cause that will change the struc­ture of the coun­try, cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties. That’s where the fu­ture is,” Khan stat­ed.

He said he al­so saw sev­er­al sec­tors of T&T which were al­ready do­ing quite well and which con­tin­ue to de­vel­op such as tourism and ser­vices.

“The coun­try has very high hu­man cap­i­tal and high­ly-ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple who are ex­posed to the vi­sion and the rest of the world and giv­en the right en­vi­ron­ment, fi­nances and re­sources the coun­try can do ex­treme­ly well in ser­vices...it can al­so do very well in eco-tourism and there is al­so fur­ther po­ten­tial for man­u­fac­tur­ing, agro­pro­cess­ing and fish­ing as well,” Khan main­tained.

On how ties can be fur­ther strength­en be­tween T&T and the UK, Khan was con­fi­dent that at both the lev­el of the Gov­ern­ment and that of the peo­ple this was al­ready tak­ing place.

Dur­ing his vis­it Khan said he met with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing busi­ness cham­bers and acad­e­mia to gain a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the lo­cal land­scape and to de­ter­mine where fur­ther sup­port was need­ed fol­low­ing which such con­ver­sa­tions would be tak­en back to the UK.

British High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Har­ri­et Cross, who al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian, added that Khan’s vis­it can help this coun­try to achieve its eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment plans.

“One of the rea­sons we are in­ter­est­ed in his (Khan’s) ex­per­tise, is it helps us de­cide how we plan our en­gage­ment with Trinidad, where are the pri­or­i­ty ar­eas where the UK might add val­ue to a par­tic­u­lar area of the econ­o­my or a par­tic­u­lar area of skills and ex­per­tise that our in­ter­locu­tors can help take Trinidad and To­ba­go to the next lev­el.

“These are the sort of things we are in­ter­est­ed in: what are the chal­lenges, what are the op­por­tu­ni­ties, what do the next five or ten years look like in terms of the eco­nom­ic out­look for T&T,” she said, adding that Khan’s brought with him a wealth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence.

Cross fur­ther not­ed that Khan’s pres­ence un­der­scored a shared com­mit­ment to en­hanc­ing greater col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“This is a time of trans­for­ma­tion in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas such as en­er­gy tran­si­tion and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. We are de­light­ed to en­gage in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions and take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to work to­geth­er to­wards a pros­per­ous and sus­tain­able fu­ture,” Cross added.

In shar­ing fur­ther in­sights about the talks that took place, Cross said this in­clud­ed how can ex­ports be boost­ed from T&T to the UK and how this coun­try can learn from some of the things the UK has done do help com­pa­nies ex­port.

On the eco­nom­ics side, she said there was al­so valu­able ad­vice to be shared.

“The UK is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing through a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic time at the mo­ment and our Prime Min­is­ter has said things are go­ing to get hard­er be­fore they get bet­ter. So there is an el­e­ment of un­der­stand­ing about what a tough eco­nom­ic set of cir­cum­stances look like and shar­ing dif­fer­ent op­tions for ‘how do we get out of this.’

“Is it a ques­tion of re­duc­ing pub­lic spend­ing? What does the loan sit­u­a­tion look like? How can we max­imise our op­por­tu­ni­ties to make the best of what are and what can be quite dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances in the com­ing years,” Cross not­ed.

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About Pro­fes­sor Ad­nan Khan

Ac­cord­ing to GOV.UK’s web­site, Khan has fo­cused his ca­reer on ad­vanc­ing the un­der­stand­ing of de­vel­op­ment eco­nom­ics, po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and pub­lic sec­tor re­form.

He is sec­ond­ed from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence (LSE), where he is Pro­fes­sor in the School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

Khan has al­so taught cours­es at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics on de­vel­op­ment eco­nom­ics, pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions, and po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my and has taught at Har­vard Kennedy School where he has al­so been an Aca­d­e­m­ic Di­rec­tor at the School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

Khan has al­so co-chaired LSE-Ox­ford Com­mis­sion on state fragili­ty, growth and de­vel­op­ment.

He con­tin­ued to work on the theme of frag­ile states through the fol­low-up re­duc­ing fragili­ties ini­tia­tive.

Khan has pub­lished in jour­nals on is­sues such as pro­mot­ing val­ue-for-mon­ey in pub­lic pro­cure­ment, build­ing state ca­pac­i­ty by mo­ti­vat­ing civ­il ser­vants to per­form bet­ter, and on pro­mot­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship and so­cial pro­tec­tion.

He who has spent more than a decade in pol­i­cy roles in dif­fer­ent ca­pac­i­ties and in var­i­ous gov­ern­ment de­part­ments orig­i­nal­ly trained as an en­gi­neer but moved to pub­lic pol­i­cy and eco­nom­ics, study­ing at Har­vard Kennedy School and Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty.