Mov­ing T&T on­to a sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth path re­quires struc­tur­al change. In the midterm re­view, the fi­nance min­is­ter sought to put the best spin pos­si­ble on the coun­try’s short-term eco­nom­ic out­look for 2023, ad­vo­cat­ing the IMF’s growth pro­jec­tion with­out ad­dress­ing the longer-term prospects.

He did not speak to the Gov­ern­ment’s plans for the pe­ri­od 2024 and be­yond. There was no men­tion of Vi­sion 2030 or what bench­marks had been achieved in the roll­out of that plan or if or how the plan was be­ing rolled out. There were no an­nounce­ments of new promis­ing de­vel­op­ments to come, not Drag­on, not Man­a­tee, and noth­ing of the re­fin­ery.

We heard noth­ing of the promis­ing prospects fac­ing NGC in the up­com­ing round of con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions with petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies in Point Lisas. Per­haps he was be­ing cau­tious not want­i­ng to prej­u­dice the ne­go­ti­a­tions. How is NGC go­ing to ad­dress the cur­rent nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion short­ages? What can it com­mit to in con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions if it can­not guar­an­tee a con­tin­u­ous sup­ply? The en­er­gy min­is­ter did not say much to com­ple­ment the IMF’s pos­i­tive 2023 pro­jec­tion. The Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor was cau­tious in his com­ments con­firm­ing the turn­around in 2021 and 2022 which was fu­elling ro­bust con­sumer de­mand in 2023.

The good news is that the unions are ac­cept­ing the four per cent wage ne­go­ti­a­tion of­fer for pub­lic sec­tor salaries, even if the PSA has not. This is a prag­mat­ic out­come that has de­fused the dra­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with these long out­stand­ing pub­lic sec­tor salary ne­go­ti­a­tions. But salary in­creas­es must be fund­ed and as ex­pen­di­ture claims mount, so will the deficit.

There are eco­nom­ic sign­posts. The Gov­ern­ment’s in­creased rev­enue for 2021-23 is large­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the im­prove­ment in the “re­alised” en­er­gy prices re­port­ed by Min­is­ter Im­bert. But the cur­rent trend­line is neg­a­tive, mean­ing that prices for am­mo­nia, oil, and nat­ur­al gas are in de­cline. On cur­rent ev­i­dence, this trend will con­tin­ue. There­fore, pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives must be de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the no­to­ri­ous “d” word, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion which the IMF re­port said was nec­es­sary. How can the Gov­ern­ment as­sist in this re­gard? What changes does any ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der­take to fa­cil­i­tate the pri­vate sec­tor in this process?

Gov­ern­ments pro­vide the op­er­at­ing sys­tem that makes a so­ci­ety func­tion. They con­trol the per­mis­sions or li­cences, loose­ly called the “reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work” which on­ly a gov­ern­ment can grant. A so­ci­ety op­er­ates more ef­fi­cient­ly or less so de­pend­ing on how well the sys­tem func­tions. For ex­am­ple, the trans­porta­tion net­work ie, the roads, traf­fic lights, sig­nage and the rules gov­ern­ing how that net­work is main­tained is con­trolled by the Gov­ern­ment. The ve­hi­cles to trans­port goods and ser­vices the coun­try needs must be li­cenced, as must the dri­vers.

Sim­i­lar­ly, births, mar­riage, and death cer­tifi­cates are the in­stru­ments that recog­nise our ex­is­tence, and le­gal iden­ti­ty. Same for land reg­is­tra­tion, the phys­i­cal and spa­tial plan rules gov­ern where and how land should be de­vel­oped and by what stan­dards, or the un­der­ly­ing le­gal frame­work which fa­cil­i­tates all com­mer­cial trans­ac­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, the jus­tice sys­tem and polic­ing meth­ods can af­fect our lives in many ways. How eas­i­ly we ac­cess those ser­vices is called “the ease of do­ing busi­ness” and how well those sys­tems are ad­min­is­tered af­fects how a so­ci­ety func­tions.

The more ef­fi­cient these ba­sic sys­tems are, the more ef­fi­cient the coun­try. Slow or long re­sponse times dri­ve up costs. This sim­ple, but pow­er­ful frame­work, al­so de­ter­mines a coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty for growth. A coun­try can on­ly per­form as well as these sys­tems op­er­ate.

Sys­tems just don’t hap­pen. They must be de­signed, test­ed, im­ple­ment­ed and main­tained and de­vel­oped to grow as a so­ci­ety grows. As so­ci­ety mod­ernises, these sys­tems must mod­ernise as well. This brings us to the in­evitabil­i­ty of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, the ap­pli­ca­tion of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy to every­day ac­tiv­i­ties, like ap­ply­ing for pass­ports, trade or im­port li­cences, pay­ing tax­es or fines on­line or sim­ply reg­is­ter­ing com­pa­nies and di­rec­tors.

In short, gov­ern­men­tal dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion ef­forts can have a huge im­pact on com­mer­cial or in­di­vid­ual op­er­a­tions. In this re­gard, we tend to think of “gov­ern­ment” as one and as­sume these mod­erni­sa­tion ef­forts will be per­va­sive, har­monised, and even­ly han­dled. That is im­pos­si­ble as dif­fer­ent sys­tems are run by dif­fer­ent min­istries that op­er­ate as si­los. One ex­cep­tion is the op­er­a­tion of the TTBi­zLink, the T&T trade and busi­ness in­for­ma­tion por­tal, a sin­gle elec­tron­ic win­dow. This sys­tem links sev­er­al dif­fer­ent min­istries which are crit­i­cal in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the trade process; the Min­istries of Trade, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Agri­cul­ture, Health, and of course the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

This “sin­gle elec­tron­ic win­dow” has great­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed the trade process and a new im­proved ver­sion will be re­leased short­ly. Its great­est weak­ness is that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance re­mains stub­born­ly “un­in­te­grat­ed” with the SEW af­ter ten years, thus re­duc­ing the val­ue of the sys­tem and lim­it­ing its over­all ef­fec­tive­ness. This ex­em­pli­fies the com­plex­i­ty of “gov­ern­ment” and the dif­fi­cul­ty of hav­ing a whole-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach.

This in part ex­plains why dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion across var­i­ous gov­ern­ment de­part­ments has been such a patchy ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence at the cor­po­rate reg­istry at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs is a salient ex­am­ple of this dif­fi­cul­ty. In the process of com­plet­ing rou­tine an­nu­al re­turns, com­pa­ny di­rec­tors are re­quired to take a pho­to­graph with their ID next to their faces.

Are we in the 21st cen­tu­ry yet?

Mar­i­ano Browne is the CEO of the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness