Tamana InTech is no Irish Shannon

We have been in the petroleum business for over a century and we now see that with the depletion of both oil and gas and the challenge of climate change’s impact on the global petroleum industry, our economic growth is severely threatened, simply because we ignored the fundamental role that knowledge, its acquisition, use and creation play in economic development.

The quandary we face with respect to what to do with respect to Petrotrin is only one case in point.

Still, recently the Trade Minister said that some 21 lots are now ready in the Tamana InTEch Park, which is expected to play a key role in diversifying TT’s economy away from oil and gas. The idea of this TT$2.2 billion investment in infrastructure (not knowledge, its use of creation, innovation) is to provide an industrial park to attract investors, hopefully, to establish businesses, to earn foreign exchange and provide jobs. There is one client already for the park, a call centre and the plan is to invite others in ICT, business process outsourcing, high value manufacturing, clean technologies, business services and agro processing.

The immediate question is why should anyone come to Tamana? What are at least the comparative advantages offered by the Park? The fundamental question is whether our investing in a park, in infrastructure, with no thought of creating a very highly skilled human resource, is the best way to maximise returns on both our human and capital resources? Many years ago one of my colleagues said that such a park is the best we can do-- if we can populate it-- since our local comparative advantages are that we can provide accommodation, food, transportation, entertainment and the like. Innovation and competing in the global product and services markets are outwith our skill sets.

The Minister of Trade lamented the fact that under the People’s Partnership (PP) government the Tamana project lapsed and it is now being revived by the current government. After the PP won the last but one general election in 2010, I was requested to help the new government diversify the economy and was offered the task as Minister of Planning. Though the Tamana Park did not fall directly in my portfolio, in my view for the reasons already articulated, it was an incomplete, if not an unnecessary, vehicle to give any hope for economic diversification, for economic development. It ignored the fundamental requirement of creation of an innovation system and depended on serendipity; maybe some investors will come and create a centre of innovation, science and technology and global entrepreneurship; surely a call centre is nothing like what was hoped for.

The staff at the Ministry of Planning and I finalised a draft plan for such an innovation system which we took to the people in a series of “panchayats” for their comment, modifications and acceptance; the process of legitimation, without which no plan would succeed. This was completed in December 2011 and the next process of fore-sighting commenced.

The outcome of this fore-sighting process was to be the selection of technological and industrial areas/ clusters given the emerging global demands in which TT could develop the required human and capital resources to build globally competitive products/services.

My task was abruptly brought to a close and indeed the process of economic diversification under the PP lapsed.

If what the current Minister of Trade tells us, Tamana, is the flagship of government’s thrust into diversification (since building highways and ports is not), then the process of diversification remains lapsed.