Budget lacks incentive for competitiveness

Plipdeco’s chairman, Dr Rolph Balgobin, has called for Trinidad and Tobago to develop a stronger entrepreneurship culture if it hopes to maintain a competitive edge.

Speaking at a post-budget conference in San Fernando last week, the economist lamented that the focus is more on social stability, rather than improving competitiveness.

He noted that on the international competitiveness index Trinidad and Tobago has done poorly at 86 out of 133 countries. He said the country needs to become innovative.

"You know that an economy is innovation driven when you have some kind of business sophistication and the capacity for innovation. We have some elements of that, but several elements are still missing."

Balgobin said, "Some of our competitive disadvantage will show up in the research, things like favouritism of decisions of government officials, effectiveness of banking monopoly policy, our nature of competitiveness advantage and our capacity for innovation."

He suggested that there must be a complete shift in the approach to education where people need to be proactive in taking ideas generated through research at the universities and getting involved in entrepreneurial endeavour.

“We need to see new ideas coming out of these systems to justify the amount of money we are putting into them. There are still far too many organisations on the island that are paying for certification and not for performance and around our university system."

Balgobin lamented the fact that the country has "a proliferation of accommodation and roti shops and bars. We aren’t seeing business. We aren’t seeing off shoots of modern thinking and innovation and people feeling that they need to locate their business close the university so they can get a hold of some of that."