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  • 1 year ago
In Celebration of its 60th Anniversary, the Central Bank hosted a panel discussion with regional lending institutions on the theme, Building T&T's Economic and Financial Resilience. The banks indicated interest in lending more to T&T and specified areas of focus.
Transcript
00:00Between 1970 and 2016, TNT only availed itself of U.S. $200 million in loans from the Caribbean
00:09Development Bank.
00:10That's a paltry sum, given the size of Trinidad's economy, but also given the size of some of
00:16Trinidad's challenges.
00:19And the capital that Trinidad holds in the bank is just under 18 percent, as Shelton
00:24mentioned, one of the biggest shareholders.
00:27And given Trinidad's credit rating, it would be great to have more engagement.
00:32More engagement would occur in areas of focus based on several factors, including the country's
00:37aspirations via its Vision 2030.
00:41Diversifying Trinidad's economy, embedding digital transformation across the economy,
00:49and working on technical assistance areas, including areas like not just in the creative
00:55economy where we've done a lot of work, but also in agriculture, access to finance.
01:00The bank wants to help TNT with its productivity, which according to these experts, TNT is 60
01:07percent as productive as the U.S.
01:10When you decompose the growth between labor, capital, and technology, what is called technology
01:22is the total factors productivity, you see that it was negative in the last years.
01:33And that's a huge issue.
01:35For example, of the nine most important sectors for the economy, seven have a very low productivity.
01:43Two areas of high productivity are energy and trade.
01:49We learn in areas of data availability, staff capacity, and communications.
01:55Availability, data availability here, you are in a very good position because compared
02:02to other countries or central banks in the region, you have data warehouse, you have
02:07quite developed data system.
02:09But maybe where the gaps are is to use the data which you have in-house a little bit
02:16more extensively.
02:17In the specific case of TNT, digital transformation remains a challenge despite the country being
02:24an early adopter of the agenda.
02:27But rank is still 92 out of 131 economies in network readiness index.
02:33So there is a lot of space to improve.
02:36The main challenges limited the state capacity to regulate and implement digital information
02:42and the low participation of citizens and firms in the digital economy.
02:46The panel discussion titled, Building TNT's Economic and Financial Resilience, celebrated
02:52the central bank's 60 years of existence.
02:56Ravishi Tamari, Ruknaroyan, TV6 News.
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