Pao­lo Ker­na­han

There are fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent and en­ter­pris­ing souls in T&T des­per­ate­ly work­ing their way around the lim­i­ta­tions of this back­ward coun­try to find suc­cess in the glob­al world of e-com­merce.

En­dur­ing the ap­a­thy of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, these en­tre­pre­neurs are try­ing to es­cape the im­port-and-sell-onom­ics of our large­ly os­si­fied busi­ness mind­set. This un­sung de­mo­graph­ic, fo­cus­ing on mar­kets in de­vel­oped coun­tries like the US, UK and Cana­da, are pi­o­neer­ing spir­its build­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion brick by brick, or rather, URL by URL.

The im­pend­ing sev­en per cent on­line tax does more than ig­nore this de­mo­graph­ic. It ac­tive­ly chips away at the ef­forts of pri­vate cit­i­zens to trans­form the econ­o­my in­to one which us­es tech­nol­o­gy to mon­e­tise our dy­nam­ic imag­i­na­tions. The tax ex­pos­es our ig­no­rance of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary im­pact of e-com­merce on glob­al busi­ness prac­tices.

It is as­sumed that all en­tre­pre­neur­ial der­ring-do is em­bod­ied in the col­lec­tive wis­dom of our var­i­ous busi­ness cham­bers and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion. But there is an un­recog­nised co­hort of mi­cro busi­ness­es cre­at­ing lo­cal prod­ucts and find­ing out­side buy­ers on­line. Rigid per­cep­tions of what con­sti­tutes a busi­ness blinds us to this co­hort.

To­day, small busi­ness­es can reach for­eign cus­tomers di­rect­ly. I sell my prod­ucts on Ama­zon and on my web­site. There are, no doubt, count­less oth­ers do­ing the same. The costs of es­tab­lish­ing an e-com­merce web­site was once pro­hib­i­tive for any­one oth­er than larg­er in­ter­ests. But soft­ware like Pay­pal means small busi­ness­es can get in on e-com­merce op­por­tu­ni­ties. Glob­al on­line re­tail­ers like Ama­zon, Ebay and Et­sy have al­so opened up to sell­ers in more coun­tries across the globe so a web­site isn't a must-have to get go­ing.

On­line trade isn't re­strict­ed to phys­i­cal prod­ucts. Cit­i­zens are sell­ing free­lance ser­vices like writ­ing, graph­ics, web­site de­sign and all sorts to peo­ple out­side T&T. Are our lead­ers aware of these trends? All this promise, though, is mired in in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ure to recog­nise the im­mense po­ten­tial of e-com­merce. Worse still, get­ting the US cur­ren­cy you earn in­to your lo­cal bank ac­count is need­less­ly com­pli­cat­ed. Not every­one can set up a bank ac­count in the US or Cana­da, which is a re­quire­ment for on­line glob­al gi­ants like Ama­zon. Help­ing e-com­merce en­tre­pre­neurs get our US earn­ings home re­mains a chal­lenge to which the state and the banks are both un­equal and un­in­ter­est­ed.

It is al­so im­por­tant to note that do­ing busi­ness on­line means pay­ing for ser­vices in US. This means you will be taxed sev­en per cent for try­ing to earn for­eign ex­change!

Small fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness­es in oth­er coun­tries ex­ist en­tire­ly on­line. These ma­trix-dwellers func­tion with­in an e-com­merce frame­work which al­lows mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es to thrive.

The Amish com­mu­ni­ty in the US, the same peo­ple who shun tele­vi­sion and ride in horse-and-bug­gy, sells its ar­ti­san fur­ni­ture and pop­corn on­line...pop­corn yuh hear! At home, the pin­na­cle of our e-com­merce achieve­ment is linx.

E-com­merce can't flour­ish in an en­vi­ron­ment which swears by the phi­los­o­phy, "If you can't un­der­stand it, kill it."

The po­lit­i­cal class prob­a­bly can't fig­ure out a way to wran­gle kick­backs out of this evolved en­tre­pre­neur as there are no mega projects to feed their mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal dis­po­si­tions. We have a ten­den­cy to think you are on­ly in busi­ness if you are big. But in­di­vid­ual ants (al­though "ants" has a deroga­to­ry con­no­ta­tion in T&T) work­ing in con­cert can reg­is­ter among the largest or­gan­isms on the plan­et. Build­ing a net­work of 3,000-5,000 small en­tre­pre­neurs earn­ing US through e-com­merce can start to im­prove our for­eign ex­change earn­ings. The man hew­ing beau­ti­ful bowls out of wood blocks or the woman mak­ing hand­made nat­ur­al soaps should be em­pow­ered to sell their prod­ucts on­line out­side of T&T.

E-com­merce alone isn't a panacea for our eco­nom­ic malaise, but it can help. It can al­so spur eq­ui­ty in a pri­vate sec­tor that re­mains large­ly skewed to­wards the priv­i­leged. Go­ing in­to busi­ness in this coun­try once meant you had to come from mon­ey.

Some of this mon­ey dates back to the en­dur­ing his­tor­i­cal ad­van­tage of the Cedu­la of Pop­u­la­tion in which favourable land grants al­most guar­an­teed pros­per­i­ty for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of cer­tain fam­i­lies in an un­equal na­tion.

Oth­er for­tunes are de­rived from the pow­er of con­tacts with­in the gov­ern­ment.

Tech­nol­o­gy is blow­ing apart the old or­der. Ten years ago I couldn't dream of cre­at­ing tele­vi­sion shows as the tech­nol­o­gy was pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive. This changed as com­pe­ti­tion forced the prices of cam­eras and com­put­ers down. And so it is for both young and old en­tre­pre­neurs now us­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed, rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive tech to bring their prod­ucts to for­eign mar­kets with­out the com­pet­i­tive edge of in­her­it­ed as­sets.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they needn't have King Solomon's Mines to fund mar­ket­ing. Blog­ging, so­cial me­dia, web­sites–these are all tools avail­able to plugged-in en­tre­pre­neurs who want to get the word out about their prod­ucts.

This is why the sev­en per cent on­line tax is so trou­bling. It is af­fir­ma­tion, at the pol­i­cy lev­el, of our un­will­ing­ness to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue trends al­ready es­tab­lished in oth­er coun­tries to di­ver­si­fy eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and, in our case, earn much need­ed for­eign ex­change. We aren't pre­pared to tax our brains, so here's an­oth­er tax. That is why this isn't a de­vel­op­ing na­tion, it is a time cap­sule.