KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

“Ab­solute fool­ish­ness”—that is how Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed the heavy for­eign ex­change spend­ing on Car­ni­val cos­tumes. While he un­der­stands that peo­ple want to en­joy them­selves dur­ing Car­ni­val, he in­sists that cos­tumes are not in­vest­ments.

Speak­ing at the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for Nu­trim­ix’s An­i­mal Feed and Pet Food plant in Point Lisas yes­ter­day, Row­ley re­vealed that he re­cent­ly saw some­one of­fer­ing a sig­nif­i­cant sum of mon­ey for Car­ni­val cos­tumes. He em­pha­sised that cos­tumes should be lo­cal­ly sourced.

“I saw a chil­dren’s band on Sat­ur­day, and I think it was the best band in the large band cat­e­go­ry for tod­dlers. All the cos­tumes were made in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and that, to me, is what we should be about,” Row­ley said.

Laud­ing the Nu­trim­ix Group of Com­pa­nies’ ex­pan­sion in the agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tor, Row­ley al­so ac­knowl­edged Nu­trim­ix’s pres­i­dent Ron­nie Mo­hammed’s com­plaint that while sev­er­al state agen­cies func­tioned ef­fi­cient­ly in se­cur­ing ap­provals for his com­pa­ny’s project, oth­ers made the process painstak­ing­ly slow, re­quir­ing pa­tience and per­sis­tence.

Row­ley warned that the slow pace of ap­provals can sti­fle in­vest­ment and hin­der the ex­pan­sion of T&T’s econ­o­my.

He not­ed that when speak­ing with his coun­ter­parts in Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines—who are al­so striv­ing for eco­nom­ic growth—there is a clear sense of ur­gency. How­ev­er, he lament­ed that T&T seems to spe­cialise in de­lays and ob­struc­tion, giv­ing the im­pres­sion that some en­ti­ties are more con­cerned with process­es than out­comes, which he de­scribed as frus­trat­ing.

“I have seen projects in Grena­da and St Vin­cent move at an alarm­ing speed with­out dam­ag­ing their coun­tries and with­out their pop­u­la­tions as­sum­ing that every­one in­volved in the project is cor­rupt. Yet here, every page, every day, every hour, and every minute must be scru­ti­nised.”

He stressed that the time has come for cit­i­zens to ad­dress the is­sue of in­ef­fi­cien­cy, warn­ing that the coun­try risks miss­ing out on in­vest­ments flow­ing in­to oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries.

“If we do not have these kinds of in­vest­ments, if we do not have the vi­sion and be­lief that our coun­try can ab­sorb these in­vest­ments, or if we are re­quired to make them on­ly in tra­di­tion­al sec­tors, and we fo­cus sole­ly on what is wrong with this coun­try in­stead of what is good, then we will al­ways be look­ing at what is hap­pen­ing in Bar­ba­dos, in Ja­maica, and now in Grena­da and St Vin­cent.”

He ap­peared dis­mayed by the lack of new ho­tel rooms in To­ba­go, while peo­ple ad­mire the de­vel­op­ments in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Row­ley shared that he toured Bar­ba­dos last Wednes­day and spoke with Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley the fol­low­ing day. He saw six large ho­tels un­der con­struc­tion, the com­ple­tion of a ma­jor golf course that re­cent­ly won an in­ter­na­tion­al award, and sev­er­al large-scale projects set to be­gin.

He point­ed out that the one thing miss­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion was the ap­proval process. He al­so not­ed that in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, a San­dals Re­sort project moved from plan­ning to com­ple­tion and op­er­a­tion in the same time frame that T&T spent dis­cussing ap­provals for a ho­tel.

“And now that the San­dals project is well un­der­way, I can­not stop hear­ing Ralph Gon­salves in my ear, talk­ing about how won­der­ful it has been for the econ­o­my of St Vin­cent. They are about to em­bark on an­oth­er $250 mil­lion ex­pan­sion of that project, while we are still dis­cussing the ap­provals process in To­ba­go.”

Row­ley in­sist­ed that T&T needs to get se­ri­ous, as the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es are far too la­bo­ri­ous, slow, and in­dif­fer­ent. He said peo­ple who lost en­thu­si­asm due to bu­reau­crat­ic red tape have spo­ken to him, as well as oth­ers who by­passed T&T al­to­geth­er out of fear of the process.

He not­ed that while laws must be fol­lowed, it is al­so ev­i­dent that un­nec­es­sary ob­sta­cles have been placed in the way of progress.