CONTACT Magazine (Vol.18 No.1 – April 2018)

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Policy to a National Environment Policy.
There is even a Green Government
Policy.
The Economic Development
Advisory Board (EDAB) that was set up
after the 2015 election has produced a
lot of material on these very issues. If the
electorate is less than familiar with the
intricacies of national transformation,
it is not for lack of reading material.
But that painful fact points to
another difficult hurdle. It is very hard
to imagine a Trinidad and Tobago
transformed in the way the official
literature urges, with its people
enthusiastically adopting a new
mindset and a new culture. What is
economically sane and sensible is sure
to be politically toxic. One commentator
(wisely claiming anonymity) told
Contact: “What we all want is high
living with low productivity.”
So there is the vision of
transformation on
one hand, while
on the other is
the way
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things actually work in Trinidad and
Tobago. Real change would threaten
and trample on a vast web of entrenched
interactions, systems, and processes.
So much is invested in the status quo,
both political and commercial, that it
is hard to believe there is any scope for
genuine change.
Still, it must be done. The world is
changing around us and is not waiting
for Trinidad and Tobago to get its
house in order. Even with a return to
growth in 2018, even with a pickup in
the energy sector, the end is in sight for
fossil fuels; their terminal decline may
well be only a couple of decades away.
Dodging the issue now simply means
kicking the can down the road for a
new generation to pick up.
Private sector leadership
In the face of these challenges, the
Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of
Industry and Commerce has
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an unavoidable role to
play in providing
inspirational
leadership.
Which is
to
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What
is economically sane
and sensible is sure to be
politically toxic
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say, it has to entice the business
community to go the whole length of
the road. It cannot leave leadership to
the government alone.
The private sector will have to
divest itself of business models and
processes which no longer work to
the national good. It will have to
prioritise products and services which
save or earn foreign exchange. It must
innovate and diversify. It must develop
a greater sense of global markets, and
the external demand which Trinidad
and Tobago can supply.
Even so, without partnership and
mutual support from the government
and labour, the road leads straight into
the desert. Somehow, the visions of
the three partners in transformation
must find a way to mesh. To have them
pulling in different directions in pursuit
of separate goals is a recipe for national
deadlock and stagnation.
All this is going to hurt. People
are going to bawl. At every level of
society, people will have to climb out
of their comfort zones. We’ll need
mutual support and encouragement
to keep cheerful and optimistic. But
we don’t really have a choice. There is
too much work to do. We have been
hanging around too long waiting for
Godot to appear. We’ll be better off
remembering the Calypso Monarch’s
warning about what will happen
“if change doesn’t start with
you.”
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www.chamber.org.tt/contact-magazine 21
Trinidad and Tobago Chamber
of Industry and Commerce