Prime Minister's Speech at Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce's luncheon at the Hyatt Hotel

I am happy for the opportunity provided me today to address an audience as distinguished as this. I would like to begin by joining with Mrs. Angela Persad in thanking the management of the Hyatt hotel for the excellent preparations that have been put in place in time for today’s function. And I too would like to join with Mr. Ian Collier, the President of the Chamber in thanking the Government of Trinidad and Tobago for providing the facility.

I have waited a long time my dear friends to be able to say that because as you know when the decision was announced to construct these facilities of which the hotel is just one part, there is the Conference Centre, the largest in the English speaking Caribbean and there are 2, 26 storey towers next door. This project was the subject of tremendous negative comment, in fact not just the project but also those who were responsible for it. The Prime Minister was seen as the villain of the peace and the question was asked ‘But why is he insisting on building these tall buildings and that you can not run a country properly on the basis of the construction of tall buildings,’ all kinds of comments, not dissimilar from some of the uninformed comments that we heard in respect of the Brian Lara Promenade, not dissimilar my dear friends, from some of the comments that we heard in respect of the government complex just over the road. Now that the benefits of the thing are evident much of that is giving way to comments of a different nature. It reminds me of an event 2000 years ago when Jesus Christ after his resurrection appeared to the disciplines and there was one of them who could not believe what he saw and he said that he would only believe, his name was Thomas, he would only believe if he was allowed to put his finger in the wound. My dear friends I take it that by attending this function today you are in the wound itself and that all disbelievers would have disappeared.

I am very pleased indeed to have been given the single honour of being the first person to address an audience in this magnificent facility. And these facilities as you know represent the future of Trinidad and Tobago, it is the aspirations of a small developing country, which dares to take on the world because that is what we are doing, which has espoused the concept of globalisation which has said that whether we are big or small, whoever may exist in the world we feel confident enough among ourselves to be able to take on all comers and to shine my dear friends. To achieve for our people, the standard of living and the quality of life to which we aspire, we are confident of our ability to do it. We are not afraid of globalisation or all the negatives or whatever threats may come with it. Having said that may I also say, just for the record, that the model needs modification, I think everybody now understands that private sector driven growth is essential but that it cannot happen without a significant intervention from the State. Had it not been for State’s involvement my dear friends, we would not have been in this Hyatt hotel today nor would we have been able to look on the rest of this complex here or on what is taking place at the Government Plaza or what is taking place at the Princess Building site of the Academy for the Performing Arts and what is taking place in so many other venues all over Trinidad and Tobago at this time. There is an essential role for the State in national economic and social development.

My dear friends, as confident as we are and as proud as we are of our achievements there is a concern, and an all pervading concern that is always at the back of our minds as we pursue the development of Trinidad and Tobago and that is the unacceptable level of crime. Its unacceptable to the government, its unacceptable to the private sector, its unacceptable to all of us, the government is no different and that we have had reason to say within recent times that if we try strategy A and it does not work we’ll try strategy B, and if we try strategy B and it does not work we will try strategy C. In other words we will pursue relentlessly our determination to eradicate from Trinidad and Tobago crime at the levels that now exist and bring it to levels that are much more acceptable, I reiterate that commitment today.

Yesterday the National Security Council met to consider this thing again; we are looking at it all the time. We realise my dear friends, a big problem in the fight against crime is inadequate law enforcement; it’s the reality of the situation. I am not casting aspersions on anybody, the law enforcement is just not up to standard and that is the reality. As you know the Commissioner of Police has served his term and has been kind enough to stay on until such time as a new Commissioner can be appointed. The legal framework in which that is done is a framework that has imposed on us a very cumbersome process. As you know it was a negotiated arrangement in the Parliament and the government really did not have the control over it as we would have liked to, but it was negotiated and it has put in place a long and cumbersome process by which a new Commissioner of Police is to be appointed. As a consequence of which, it does not appear as though a new Commissioner of Police will be in place before the end of May 2008.

May I also say that the Deputy Commissioners of Police and their appointment is also subject to the same cumbersome process, and yesterday in considering that and in deciding to try as fast as possible to work with the Police Service Commission to accelerate the appointment of a new Commissioner we have decided to go back to the Parliament on this matter. Even if we are unable to benefit from a Parliamentary reconsideration in respect of appointments at this time, we think it necessary since we have identified the problem to address the Parliament at the earliest opportunity to try to have that corrected. It must not happen to us again, but it will take us more than 6 months to appoint a Commissioner of Police.

My dear friends, when that happens, and in doing so we are looking at the widest possible reservoir from which to draw, it is not just being restricted to the domestic market but we going outside of Trinidad and Tobago. We expect that the Commissioner will have a say in the appointment of the Deputy Commissioners which should happen about one month after that appointment and then the Commissioner of Police under the law is able to appoint all the Assistant Commissioners and all the members of the Executive.

The first responsibility of the new Commissioner of Police will be to review the entire Executive of the police service and to make appropriate appointments.

The second matter that we decided yesterday is that the time has come to give the Special Anti Crime Unit, which incidentally has worked extremely well in the context of its mandate, a legal complexion. The implication of that is, that the Special Anti Crime Unit will not have to operate under the ambit of the Commissioner of Police and therefore would not have to wait on the police service or any other authority to be able to act and act in the way that it ought to. In fact when that happens, and we are moving expeditiously to the Parliament to get it done, we will give the Special Anti Crime Unit direct responsibility for criminal gangs in the country.

And the third decision we took yesterday, it is subject to the Cabinet approval and will go to the Cabinet shortly, is that the death penalty is a very important intervention in curtailing the level of murders in Trinidad and Tobago and it is going to call for legislative action and it will require negotiations with the opposition but we are going to the Parliament my dear friends. If they wish to support us, they support us and it passes if they don’t wish to support us then it fails and that is the end of that. We are going to the Parliament and we will take our case to the people of Trinidad and Tobago. We are not prepared to get involved in all the arguments into which we were entangled with the police legislation before, it took us 5 years to get that passed, had that been passed 5 years earlier we would have been well on our way my dear friends to curtailing the crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago as we are now experiencing it.

No Prime Minister, no leader could have asked for a better opportunity than the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago has at this time to oversee the development of your country. The starting point is the natural resources with which the country is endowed and if God in his wisdom gave us oil and gas my dear friends, let us not behave as though it is a crime to have oil and gas, and as though to develop the oil and gas that almighty God in his wisdom gave to us, is to do something that is wrong and is something of which that we should be ashamed, we start with that. We start with the natural resources that we have, a government before us made the mistake and I’d like to point it out again, the NAR Manifesto of 1986 condemned as they put it, the development of mega projects which is what they thought the government before them had been doing and decided to develop as they put it in their manifesto new sub sectors, the viability of which will be guaranteed on the base of the domestic market.

My dear friends, once you talking the energy sector it is a mass flow industry, it is a large-scale, 1.3 million people cannot sustain any aspect of the industry in terms of a market. If you have the concept wrong then you going to have the thing wrong, it took us, they stopped all the major projects and as professor Julian reminded me 2 days ago, it took us 2 years to properly get Trinidad and Tobago back on the radar screens of the major energy corporations around the world, we can not afford that kind of thing in the competitive environment in which we are now operating. If we have oil and gas, it is with oil and gas that we start and we cannot apologise for doing that, that is what you have. You can not start with uranium, we do not have that, we can not start with copper we do not have that, you could only start with what you have and therefore I make the point because there are too many of us who seem to feel that when the government says that with our oil resources and gas resources we will do A, B, C and D, the government is making an error of judgement in the prescriptions that they are adhering too, that cannot be. Our commitment is to maximise the value that the country gains from the development of oil and gas while at the same time seeking to develop alternatives that allow us to diversify away from having all our eggs in one basket. A simple concept let us try not to complicate it my dear friends and there is no need to apologise for developing your natural resources.

Our gas development is not yet complete and as we conceive the modern industrial state of Trinidad and Tobago we see the need to have one iron and steel, two aluminium and three plastics on the basis of the raw materials of propylene and polypropylene and ethylene and polyethylene and the forth pillar of course is ICT, Information and Communications Technology, to which the President of the Chamber so eloquently referred.

Those are the bases of the modern industrial state of Trinidad and Tobago and if we stop short, if we allow ourselves to be derailed particularly by the environmental lobby or by some other group that may not be well informed, then we will make the mistake of our lives. Today you cannot build a processing plant in the United States because the government of the United States allowed the environment lobby to get out of hand. What Trinidad and Tobago is saying is this, that we go for sustainable development, we pay due regard my dear friends to environmental considerations, that is our responsibility but what we will not allow is our development programme, that has been so well conceived to be derailed on the basis of emotion and uninformed comment or uninformed political action. And therefore if the experts say that on the basis of health and environmental considerations there is no bar to the establishment of an aluminium industry in Trinidad and Tobago, then the responsibility of the government is to proceed with the aluminium and that we are doing, and it is going to come up again not too long from now. We are going to be coming to the country on propylene and polypropylene, it is going to come up again, we will fight the same battles all over again and when we get the ethylene and polyethylene its going to come up again.

We anticipate that the country will have polypropylene by about 2011 or shortly thereafter. There is a glitch in respect of ethylene and polyethylene but we are working to see if we can iron that out and to develop industries, which will constitute a diversification away from the energy sector. My dear friends, if our gas resources run out and we have a tremendous amount of downstream industries based on the availability of propylene and polypropylene and ethylene and polyethylene, all we then do is import it, import the raw material and therefore we are not half as vulnerable as many would like to make out to be if we move in the direction of ethylene and polyethylene or propylene and polypropylene. You either do it on the basis of your own raw materials or you import the raw materials to do it. It is the same way with iron and steel, it is the same with aluminium.

So that interventions to bring about a proper base, based on those raw materials are interventions that in fact diversify away from the energy sector contrary to what so many other people have said, it in fact does that because we cannot do it domestically or just import the raw materials to do it.

When you get into plastics the downstream possibilities are enormous, and downstream for small businesses 20 people, 10 people, 5 people, 5 million dollars that kind of thing, enormous downstream possibilities.

The unemployment figures for the third quarter 2007 are now in, the figure is 5.2%. One year earlier, third quarter 2006 the figure was 5% went to 6, 6.7% now its back to 5.2% and the business community I am sure is feeling it, you feel all the shortages, shortages of man power of labour. When we talk about the hotel industry and when we talk about maximising it in Trinidad and Tobago you must take certain factors into account.

In Tobago they have reached full employment ladies and gentlemen, there is no labour left in Tobago, that’s the reality of it. The tourism sector in Tobago is now proceeding on the basis of labour from Venezuela, on the basis of labour from Colombia, on the basis of labour from Guyana, on the basis of labour from elsewhere in the Caribbean, it is maxed out and we can now further expand the hotel sector in Tobago if we liberalise our immigration laws and if we now incorporate in our thinking and economic planning the need to have a freer movement of skills in the region and to import the skills that you require from inside of Trinidad and Tobago. It is no different in Trinidad, the Hyatt hotel, this facility in which we have gathered today, a week ago they had 360 members of staff heading to 420, they had some challenges in getting the labour, but they got it. In other words ladies and gentlemen as we expand our hotel stock we are going to have to depend more heavily on labour from outside of Trinidad and Tobago. Globalisation has hit, check the people working in this hotel, the chefs, where are the chefs from, where are the housekeepers from. The Hyatt hotel for those who do not know, is now managing the Prime Minister’s residence and Diplomatic Centre, therefore we see it at first hand, I can give you a few details but I do not want to cause a furore. I do not want some smart reporter to decide to make mileage at the expense of the Prime Minister and to distort the thing but I see it, the executive housekeeper is from Goa in India, I could give you more, that’s the reality, that’s the world in which we live. It is a globalise world, we are competing against all comers and therefore the restricted policy prescriptions that talk about domestic as opposed to foreign labour in circumstances where you do not even have the domestic capacity to provide it are outdated my dear friends and can find no place in modern economic and industrial thinking, it could have no place, so that’s the reality of that.

So to accelerate our developmental programme we have to do it on the basis of labour from outside of Trinidad and Tobago. When we started there was a howl until one day the Diplomatic Centre was not there then 8 months later, it was there. The Diplomatic Centre was built in 8 months, the Prime Minister’s residence was built in 8 months my dear friends on the basis of Chinese labour, largely Chinese labour there was some labour from Trinidad and Tobago, and with this facility there was French supervision from Bouygues Bâtiment, but about 87% of the labour was domestic, you see, it could be sustained at the time that this hotel was started, there was enough labour available. However, now that the construction sector, along with the development programme has picked up we will now have had to join the ranks of many other countries in circumstances similar to us who have had to develop on the basis of labour from outside of their own borders, it is a standard international practice, we either do it that way or we curtail our rate of development.

We have been urged to curtail the rate of development, we have made it clear that we do not intend to do that because you can sustain a high rate by doing other things, you deal with the supply side for those who are concerned about inflation. There are so many things you can import my dear friends, without prejudice to anything domestic because the domestic construction sector is at capacity and in fact if you leave it like that what you are likely to get is price gouging and profiteering. I don’t think honourable members of the business community normally like to indulge in practices of that nature, that’s the reality of it, if you leave it like that then supply and demand allows the development of pricy policies that are inimical to the interest of the developmental objectives of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.

And my dear friends, over the last 2 years or so we have been putting a number of structures and strategies in place, these are designed to accelerate our rate of development, the special purpose state enterprises being one of them. We think that the model has now been properly identified and refined and we are in a position to accelerate the country’s rate of development even further and that is where we are headed. When we took the decision, remember when we embarked on a housing programme, we said 100, 000 houses in 10 years, 8000 in the public sector, 2000 in the private sector, what was said about it, pie in the sky, the emperor dreams again, some of you all were saying that, true. Well the dreams continue even if its not an emperor who’s doing it, the dreams continue because you see we realise that what a country is able to achieve is limited only by the vision of its leaders and if the leaders do not have the vision it will not be achieved, we made a big point with that in the housing programme. PNM’s policy 100,000 houses in 10 years, the UNC’s policy land for the landless I ask you the question now what would have been the position of Trinidad and Tobago if there was not a policy change and if we had not gone into a programme of housing construction. My dear friends what would the position of Trinidad and Tobago have been. The squatting would have been far more out of hand than it is now, the country would have been far more lawless than it is now and all that goes with that. In the PNM we make the point all the time, of pointing out the differences between the People’s National Movement and the other political parties on the domestic scene today because there are too many people who like to say ‘well there’s no difference between them,’ but that’s not true, there are big differences between them, very big in fact for one we subscribe to the highest standard of integrity in the conduct of public affairs.

Ladies and Gentlemen we are moving to the future so the developmental programme continues. Priorities, highway construction, freeway construction let me use the right term, extension of the Solomon Hochoy Highway from Golcunda to Point Fortin through Debe, upgrading of the road system from Paria Suites Hotel in south Trinidad right in to Point Fortin, into the south western peninsula, the construction of the freeway from San Fernando to Princess Town to Rio Claro to Mayaro, the construction of the highway from St. Joseph to Princess Town parallel to the Solomon Hochoy and Uriah Butler Highway. The extension of the Churchill Roosevelt Highway goes eventually into Toco, the construction of a highway from the east west corridor to the north coast, the construction of a road from Port or Spain to Chagaramas but not along the coast but going around that back and perhaps involving tunnelling through the hills.

Those are the basic elements of the highway system that is emerging. We do not intend on doing it as we have done in the past you build 1 then you build 2, we will be doing it in about 5 packages, the packages are going to be large enough to attract international contractors in joint venture with local contractors because there must be a transfer of technology and we are seeking to put that highway system in place in the shortest possible time. The time frame that we have identified is 8 years, so its going to be a lot of development, all at the same time, its not a piece here and a piece there, its all at the same time. Remember the United States after the Great Depression of 1929, remember what the President of the United States did, it was the new deal, it is then the new highways were built in the United States, it is then that the modern successful industrial state of the USA developed on the basis of a public sector programme of road construction, highway construction had the effect of opening up of the country and you see what the consequences have been for the United States of America. Trinidad and Tobago my dear friends is no different and while we do that the rapid rail is proceeding, it should be fully in place by about 2013. It involves Sangre Grande to Diego Martin and Port of Spain to San Fernando and we are now contemplating taking it to Debe and it will be built all at the same time so that you are about to see my dear friends a further escalation of the construction in Trinidad and Tobago, and while that is happening the project managers for the construction of the new port have been identified and we expect the request for proposals to go out sometime before the middle of the year. A new Port, east of Sea Lots, when that port is constructed it should take 24 months to construct, then we will remove the port from where it is and it opens the way for continuing the development that has started here right into Invader’s Bay. The boundary will not be Dock Road incidentally it will be Wrightson Road and we are going to acquire and relocate everything in its path and you are going to see a new Trinidad and Tobago emerging my dear friends, from here to Invader’s Bay, 26 storey buildings, that’s the highest we are not going to allow higher than that and incidentally as you cross Wrightson Road we are not going to allow 26 storey buildings, we are going to progressively bring down the intensity of the development.

At the same time it is a major programme of drainage works, it is a 10-year drainage programme that would be put in place because we have to fix the drainage. Incidentally, as regards to the highways we are going to do it of the basis of the concessionaire arrangement, that is to say, we will allow a developer to design the highway, to build it, to operate it, to toll it, to maintain it and after an appropriate time it reverts to the State. Our capital involvement in it will only be to the extent that it is necessary to keep the toll at an acceptable level, it will limit the State’s exposure and therefore the finances required to do it will be far less than otherwise would have been the case. So those who feel that the money might not be there just let me set your mind at ease at this time. We move to drainage, drainage is a big programme; it’s a 10-year programme.

We have now identified efficiency over the next five years as a priority. We are moving to examine every aspect of the interface of the State with the public, every aspect of it, to see how we can make that interface much more efficient and to reduce the times for doing business with these various contact points. Every minister would tell you they have been mandated to look at their ministries to see what these points are and to begin to examine how we are going to do it.

Ladies and Gentlemen I get excited when I talk development I am sure that is very evident and if I am not careful I will talk for the whole evening but if I did that I will be out living my welcome. May I point out that the development is not just in Port of Spain the capital city even though the capital city is where it starts, there is an Academy for the Performing Arts under construction right now in San Fernando just as you have one under construction at the Princess Building site. Incidentally, the master plan for upgrading the infrastructure in Port of Spain is almost complete, it will cost us about 8 billion dollars to upgrade all the infrastructure, put everything underground, all the utilities underground and so on between the St. Ann’s River and the Maraval river, diverting the Maraval river to ensure that, that volume of water does not come into the capital city and therefore the drainage system will be in a much better position to cope and so on and so on. We could just continue to talk bout these things for a long time.

One exciting new one that is on the cards, is this, the light house, just outside the light house is a body of water that lends it self to reclamation, when we reclaim that, there are possibilities. We’re moving the port to east of Sea Lots, you have this area for reclamation, you have the PTSC compound for development, it is a major traffic hub, one of the stations of the mass trans system is going to come there and we are now contemplating putting in that area a small municipal airport. A municipal airport to allow for executive jets and traffic between Tobago and Trinidad, commute traffic between Tobago and Trinidad. The master plan is now being done of course it has the power station, it has all kinds of things in it, but the master plan is now being done and as soon as that master plan is done of course we will unveil to the public for public comment and so that you can see where your country is going.

My dear friends I take it that you will now agree with me if I say that the times are really exciting, these are exciting times. Let us not by our outlook and let us not by our public utterances give to high a credence to the negatives that we set Trinidad and Tobago, every country in the would has negatives, everyone has it and whether we would allow the negatives to consume us and to blind us to the rapid rate of development and the exciting possibilities that lie before us would be a matter entirely for us. For my part my dear friends, while we seek to eliminate the negatives we take very great solace in the fact that it is an exciting and bright new world that lies ahead of Trinidad and Tobago and that we are very fortunate yourselves to have an opportunity to direct it at this time.

God Bless you all.