Investment vital in new economic ideas

This started with the exploits of Darwent in 1866 and was followed by Rust and Lee Lum in 1901, eventually leading to the commercial production of oil in 1910 by Trinidad Oilfield Ltd, bought over by United British Oilfield Ltd (now Shell). The oil industry became an economic driver for over 50 years.

Then waste (flared) natural gas was seen as a petrochemical feedstock and government invested in the highly successful Pt Lisas — again an idea which spawned another phase of our economic development. Then the decision was taken to go into LNG, again another new area, instead of expanding the Pt Lisas petrochemical complex. This was against the view of some that LNG did not provide much added value. This development again proved to be decisive in our economic development, taking us out of the recession of the 1990s.

The lesson we should learn from the history of the exploitation of our natural resources is that major and lucrative economic discontinuities in our economic development came when investments were made in new ideas; investments in existing industries expand economic activity while the successful exploitation of new ideas is the seed corn of our future development.

Today, even with limited investment capital held by government and the risk averse nature of the private sector, surely some of this investment has to be directed into the exploitation of new ideas.

Restricting investment to the expansion of existing industries will not give us the lucrative economic breakpoints that our history has demonstrated and are essential for sustainability.

Some will tell us that government is investing some $700 million into the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses Programme which is for UWI but 20 percent of what government invests yearly in that tertiary institution — an investment from which we hoped these new ideas would flow. This has not happened since the investment spanned too broad and general areas and it simply generated better educated job seekers — the majority of whom emigrated — not idea generators.

Over the past years UWI (government investment) has concentrated on expanding the undergraduate population and providing the facilities and resources to accommodate them. Today UWI St Augustine has expanded into the biggest UWI campus with some 19,000 students.

UWI St Augustine prides itself on this expansion, this massive investment by government, as opposed to having invested in new idea generation via the creation of centres of excellence for research and development — the genesis of the country’s and region’s sustainability in economic development.

The result is a country, a region, in the midst of a recession with little industrial/creative resources to provide globally competitive exports. We are looking forward to franchised hotels, foreign investment in traditional areas as we busy ourselves talking about renewable energy, climate change etc, all of which lack the articulation of original ideas.

St Clair A King St Augustine