INVESTORS STILL BYPASSING T&T

INVESTORS are continuing to bypass Trinidad and Tobago, a new United Nations report has revealed.

T&T, which had a net loss of investments worth US $917 million in 2022 and US $778 million in 2021, does not feature in the 2023 study.

That is likely to mean that the investment climate is even bleaker than in the two previous years.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a UN agency, said in its just-released 2023 report that several countries are attracting investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But T&T, once the region’s premier investment capital, fails to make it to ECLAC’s report.

Guyana remains the Caribbean’s primary investment destination, with inflows of US $7.198 billion in 2023, which followed project announcements in 2022 worth US $13.543 billion.

Most investors are entering the country’s booming oil and natural gas sector.

Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the islands of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), and Belize attracted FDIs of varying value in 2023.

Most of the investments exceeded pre-Covid-19 levels.

The Caribbean got 28 per cent more FDIs last year, compared to 2022.

But T&T has crashed out of the investment map.

This is a sharp reversal of the peak FDIs of a decade ago, with US $1.5 billion in 2015.

There has been a steady decline in recent years, according to ECLAC figures, partly because of an ongoing fall-off in oil and gas production.

Energy and downstream service companies have been fleeing T&T, with most setting up operations in Guyana and Suriname.

One example is Halliburton, an age-old provider of goods and services to the local energy sector, which has moved its activities to the two nearby South American countries.

The local energy sector currently employs less than half the number of professionals and other workers compared to a decade ago.

Many energy professionals have secured lucrative jobs in Guyana, Suriname, and extra-regional countries.

ECLAC recommended “policies to attract investments … and what happens once they are established…”

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has blamed recent critics for hurting the investment climate.

The critics had opposed Indian billionaire Naveen Jindal being made a frontrunner for the lease of the Petrotrin plant without submitting a formal bid for evaluation.

But statistics confirm that the dismal scenario has long preceded that storm-in-a-teacup.

T&T’s poor investment scorecard is also influenced by the county’s miserable showing on the World Bank’s Ease-of-Doing-Business metrics.

It takes much longer in T&T than in most other regional countries to register a business, get electricity connections, and other relevant formalities.

ECLAC noted that several Caribbean countries have introduced measures to woo investors.

But in T&T, the crime crisis and the lack of economic diversification have negatively impacted the investment environment.

Government officials have remained mum on these issues while investors have either fled or are bypassing T&T, even as regional countries welcome FDIs each year.

Lack of investments also hurt employment and the country’s ability to earn precious foreign exchange.