A Shortcut to



Development?

 By Selwyn Ryan


In 1974 Trinidad and Tobago suddenly
 found itself flush with funds to accelerate
 economic development consequent
upon the dramatic increase in the price of
petroleum. However, the administrative re-
sources required to implement the ex-
panded development strategy which called
for heavy capital expenditure on the part of
the state were not in place. Prime Minister
Eric Williams himself bemoaned in his
1977 budget speech: "Over the past three
years especially, there has been a marked
increase in the volume, size, complexity and
cost of the capital works being undertaken
by the public sector. The pace of these de-
velopments has not been matched by the
pace of the restructuring of the public ser-
vice, improvements in staffing in a qualita-
tive sense, and rationalization of the use of
existing staff. As a result, the public sector
... has found itself increasingly unable to
cope with the managerial and other require-
ments for effective implementation of the
capital works which it has undertaken or
proposed to undertake. .... The principal
causes of inefficiency ... [are]: weaknesses
in the organizational structure and staffing
of sectoral agencies; weaknesses in pro-
cedural arrangements including those nec-
essaryto ensure effective coordination both
within and between executing agencies;
and weaknesses in relevant training and ex-
perience in the tasks to be performed."
 Given the public expectations and the
problems encountered with local profes-
sionals in helping the government to re-
spond to these expectations, the decision
was taken to experiment with "government-
to-government" agreements. As the prime
minister put it, "the government has given
consideration to a somewhat novel alterna-
tive, viz: approaching a government directly
and structuring an umbrella arrangement
through which the foreign government
would sponsor the implementation of a par-
ticular project."
 The new strategy was confidently ex-
pected to lead to the rapid achievement of
the regime's development goals in time for
the critical 1981 general election. Foreign
governments and their designated contrac-
tors were expected to compensate for the
glaring deficiencies of their Trinidad
equivalents.
 The governments involved were Canada,
the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Nether-
lands, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg,
West Germany, France and Austria. The 41


projects included rehabilitation and addi-
tions to the port and the airport, road and
bridge construction and repair, rehabilita-
tion of the public transportation system, the
building of hospitals, libraries, government
offices, abattoirs, public housing and park-
ing complexes, an official printer, survey-
ing and clearing wrecks in the harbor, the
construction of interisland ferries, the es-
tablishment of cold storage facilities, solu-
tions to local traffic problems, agricultural
resettlement, waste disposal and utilization,
dairy production and processing, industrial
baking, the establishment of a concrete ele-
ment factory, adult education, the reorga-
nization of the system of information
storage and retrieval in several government
offices, and a school nutrition program to
name a few.
 The choice of this strategy provoked a
storm of criticism both in and out of Parlia-
ment. It was viewed as a de facto reversion
to colonialism with all its assumptions
about the incompetence of colonials to be
authors of their own development. Once
again, foreigners were being invited to de-
velop the country instead of local expertise
being asked to do so within their ca-
pabilities. To the critics, it was particularly
ironic that the strategy was being articulated
by someone who had come into politics to
prove that indigenous professionals were
every whit as competent as their metro-
politan counterparts. Opposition parlia-
mentarians were extremely critical as were
local professionals, academic analysts and
senior civil servants who warned that none
of the advantages envisaged by the prime
minister would be achieved.

Critics Correct
Experience was to prove the critics correct.
The government, under the leadership of
George Chambers who became prime
minister following the death of Eric
Williams in March 1981, acknowledged in
his 1982 budget speech that "the objectives
of the government-to-government ar-
rangements are not being fully met." Con-
cerned about the delays and cost overruns
that had become endemic on all the pro-
jects, a committee under the chairmanship
of Lennox Ballah was appointed to review
the government-to-government arrange-
ments.
 The committee found that few of the an-
ticipated benefits had been achieved and
such benefits as were achieved were out-


weighed by the financial and other costs.
Few of the foreign governments were pre-
pared to guarantee or even supervise effec-
tively the performance of firms from their
countries; if anything, they used their diplo-
matic staff to obtain the best contractual
terms available to foreign firms. The report
complained: "Foreign missions consult
among themselves and have sought to ad-
justto their particular requirements the best
contractual terms offered to a foreign gov-
ernment by the government of Trinidad and
Tobago. This situation has resulted in a gen-
eral escalation of terms and benefits for
foreign governments and consequently an
unnecessary imposition on the limited re-
sources of the country... Foreign govern-
ments refused to accept responsibility for
the performance of firms even if they were
'persuaded' to designate them. The foreign
firm consistently gets the support of its for-
eign government in pressuring govern-
ment and its agencies for larger conces-
sions for the foreign entity with undesirable
consequence for the government of Trin-
idad and Tobago."
 Government-to-government contracts
had been seen as a time-saver by Williams.
It was a way of bypassing irritating bureau-
cratic hurdles and bottlenecks. The foreign
governments and the firms were however
aware, in advance of negotiations, that they
were in a monopolistic bargaining situation,
and as such, agreements were only con-
cluded expeditiously if the government
agreed to all or most of the demands of the
foreign enterprise. Contract negotiations
often dragged on. The bureaucratic de-
mands of the foreign governments' pro-
cedures and regulations further slowed
implementation. Delays were also occa-
sioned by the need on the part of foreign
firms to spend time assimilating local stan-

Crossing Swords is a
regular feature of Carib-
bean Review. The views
expressed herein are
the sole opinion of the
authors. Editorial board
member Selwyn Ryan is
chairman of the Public
Utilities Commission of
the Republic of Trinidad
and Tobago. Formerhead of the department of
government at the University of the West In-
dies, he is the author of Race and Nationalism
in Trinidad and Tobago.


CAIBBEAN rEvIEW/3