State must make doing business with ease easier


Business


2 Days Ago

An aerial view of Port of Spain. To the right is the Port of Port of Spain. – Jeff K. Mayers

LAST WEEK, a dismal picture of the Public Service emerged at the proceedings of the Parliament’s committee set up to probe “ease of doing business.”

The Town and Country Planning Division seems afraid to be firm about the rules, though what the rules actually are, few know with certainty: local government corporations have different procedures. New online measures have done little to help.

There seems to be a culture of indiscipline at the Board of Inland Revenue, but this has to be paired with a staff demotivated by lack of career advancement and promotion.

The Port Authority is struggling to keep up the pace amid the pandemic, but is quick to point out that Customs is to blame for delays in clearances too. References to lack of human resources and social distancing measures suggest thorny questions about technological resources.

Little wonder the World Bank ranks Trinidad and Tobago at 105 out of 190 countries in its 2020 survey (a deterioration from a ranking of 62 back in 2012) on facilitating trade.

“We have to improve,” urged CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham) Nirad Tewarie last week at an Amcham webinar event. Indeed.

The agencies and the committee should consider some of the suggestions made at that webinar. These included built-in risk management and advanced notice of shipments to help with port bottlenecks, as well as a nationwide approach to making improvements with a national agency set up to oversee reform.

What is not needed is officials burying their heads in the sand or prevaricating about the current situation. However it is framed, the operations at the port are not ideal – whether with regard to serving the business community or the general public through “personal” cargo.

The failure of the Port Authority to recognise that delays on either count are unacceptable is part of the problem.

We’ve written on the issue of ease of doing business before, but what the committee has made plain is that though incremental changes seem to be taking place, institutional, systemic issues – some of which have easy solutions – continue to stymie efficiency.

It is also clear that too many excuses are being made and fatigue has set in.

And while the private sector is willing to be patient and support reforms, there’s only so much it can take.

The State would do well to adopt a holistic approach to this issue. As the Parliament proceedings make plain, problems at individual agencies coalesce into an overall strangulation of commerce.

Some consideration should be paid to introducing incentives tied to productivity in several of these entities. In exchange for doing a better job, people should be paid more. Conversely, not working enough should result in pay levels dipping.

Linking pay to performance could kill two birds with one stone. It could save on labour costs, potentially, but whatever costs incurred would certainly go a long way to greasing the wheels of the business economy.

However, the State clearly needs to streamline some of its own processes and procedures too, or else even workers might find it hard to get down to work.

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