dards, regulations, customs, cultures and work habits. Some firms took as long as two years to mobilize giving rise to an inability to maintain schedules. Government-to-government strategy was expected to eliminate the corruption that had become endemic on public sector projects. The committee however found that, if anything, "the lobbying had in- creased rather than decreased." Substandard materials which did not meet contract specification were used in many cases despite complaints by local consultants. The expected high standard of performance often was not realized. Little effort was made to keep costs down or to meet time schedules. Loan financing ar- rangements made by some governments on projects which were externally financed were not always in the country's favor. The committee charged that there was oligopolistic collusion among contractors to inflate prices and terms and conditions relating to income tax and customs duty exemptions. Local regulations were flouted with impunity. In terms of the transfer of technology and training, the evidence suggests little cross- fertilization took place. In many cases, for- eign consultants picked the brains of local professionals, repackaged the information and charged fees as much as ten times those charged by their local equivalents. Where training programs were organized, the planning and design were done over- seas, affording local professionals little op- portunity to benefit. Personnel who were expected to be in position to conduct train- ing sessions were often not the most com- petent available. On-the-job management was also rigidly controlled by expatriates. In some cases, the country chosen to design and construct the project was not the most advanced in the relevant field. In other cases the firms and personnel chosen were se- lected less with an eye to their competence than to political or other considerations in the countries of origin. The committee claimed that a number of the foreign "ex- perts" did not have the expertise or the qual- ifications which the job called for and were often learning from experience gained on the job in Trinidad and Tobago. A great deal of design modification had to be insisted upon by those local professionals who were given any opportunity to make meaningful inputs. One of the keyweaknesses of the govem- ment-to-government strategy in the area of project monitoring was that inadequate provision was made for the inputs of local counterpart groups. The absence of com- petent counterpart staff meant that there was no group to whom technology could be transferred, assuming that this goal was being genuinely pursued by the foreign companies involved. The committee how- ever found that where competent local pro- fessionals were able to detect faults or problems or had discovered that substan- dard material was being used contrary to contract specifications, some foreign con- tractors, the French in particular, ignored or disregarded the submissions made. In making their final assessment of the government-to-government arrangements (the total costs of which were expected to be close to TT$7.5 billion), the Ballah commit- tee agreed that the model was innovative and theoretically desirable, but that in prac- tice, the benefits were illusory rather than real. Far from achieving the stated objec- tives, the contracts "have engendered an inordinate amount of animosity in the soci- ety at large and among the professionals in particular." What was regrettable too was that the foreign countries in question, par- ticulary France, England and Germany, had done nothing to assist with the negotiation of positive reciprocal arrangements for avi- ation rights for BWIA, for the export to Eu- rope of Trinidad and Tobago-made goods (such as rum and sugar), or in stimulating goodwill for Trinidad and Tobago in the in- ternational arena. Failure of the Strategy In assessing overall responsibility for the failure of the strategy, the committee as- signed the bulk of the blame to the govern- ment of Trinidad and Tobago which went about negotiating the various arrange- ments in an amateurish manner. The short- comings were due to the fact that "there was an absence of carefully thought-out and well-defined development plans for the 1973-81 period and beyond." All sorts of projects were identified without any sort of effort having been made to prioritize them: "Far too many projects were undertaken at the same time. As a result, government ministries and departments, given their chronic staff shortages at the professional level, were ill-equipped to cope with project definition and conceptualization, project designing, contract negotiation and project management. These deficiencies were easily and quickly recognized by foreign agencies and appear to have been exploited to the fullest." The Joint Consultative Council (JCC), an umbrella organization which brought to- gether local professionals and contractors, endorsed the Ballah report and called upon the government to implement its recom- mendations. It noted that with the downturn of the economy, local contractors and labor were underutilized and should be afforded opportunities to participate meaningfully in the government-to-government projects that were being continued. These projects, it advised, should be scaled down and allo- cated to local contractors wherever possi- ble. In response to criticisms about the past performance of local professionals, the JCC argued that local groups had not been given time to "tune up" for the construction boom and that government had instead embarked on an expensive and unproduc- tive strategy. Millions were spent on a num- ber of megaprojects with little to show for it. Government's response to the report and to the JCC was equivocal. It agreed to scrap 18 of the projects and to review 11. The remainder were to be continued. Modifica- tions were proposed to ensure greater in- volvement on the part of local consultants and professionals as well as more effective control of expenditure and completion schedules. A proposal to use the govern- ment-to-government formula only where a government owned the technology or ex- pertise was rejected. The experience of the seventies, coupled with falling oil prices and declining oil pro- duction which reduced the country's finan- cial capability, also had the effect of forcing the government to return to comprehensive multisectoral planning which Williams, in his anxiety to get things done in a hurry, had deemed unnecessary. In his 1977 budget speech, Williams had taken the view that planning had not enabled the developed industrialized nations to avoid inflation, pol- lution, shortages, the problem of urban congestion, human settlement or eco- nomic recession. Nor had it enabled devel- oping countries to increase their rate of growth. What was needed was action in cer- tain key sectors. The government now felt it necessary to return to planning which Williams had him- self vigorously endorsed in 1969. Cham- bers advised Parliament that a national planning commission and a task force would be appointed to reappraise in a com- prehensive manner the country's develop- ment strategy. The appraisal was to include: a determination as to whether the country should continue to allocate to the energy- based industrial sector national resources in the same proportions as before; a deter- mination of the optimum rate at which to exploit our hydrocarbon reserves; a deter- mination of more effective measures to de- velop the non-oil sector and diversify the export trade of the country; a determination of more effective measures to achieve max- imum self-sufficiency in food; a determina- tion of the proportion of our resources which can prudently be allocated to welfare transfers and subsidies, or put another way the division of revenues between consump- tion and investment; a determination of pri- orities within the public sector programs and of the most appropriate rate of project implementation; putting the infrastructure development program on a more efficient and manageable basis. The task force, which is chaired by William Demas, has not yet reported. Indi- cations are that they would call upon the government to curb public expenditure by further reducing food and utility subsidies and welfare transfers. One also expects them to recommend the reduction of em- ployment and a wage freeze in the public services and to urge that the number of development projects undertaken be lim- ited to those which are absolutely neces- sary. New taxation formulas may be proposed to limit consumption and en- courage production. What conclusions can be drawn from this examination of Trinidad and Tobago's re- cent development experience? The most appropriate comment was made by the pre- sent prime minister who advised Parlia- ment in his 1982 budget speech that the experience of the seventies made it clear that there were no shortcuts to develop- ment: "What emerges with utmost clarity from the experience of the 1970s and the problems arising therefrom is that develop- ment is a complex and long-term process involving among other things, sacrifice, discipline and commitment to the national good. Believe me, there are no shortcuts." 4/CA1RBBEAN PVE'IEW