Economic development is not just important to building a strong country – it is a core requirement.

It gives a country the ability to withstand the changing tides of the global landscape and manoeuvre through global shocks such as climate change and financial crises.

Economic development, in short, is important for the survival of a country and its people.

In a panel discussion hosted by Central Bank featuring key figures in multilateral financial institutions on September 4 at the Central Bank Auditorium, panellists agreed that for TT and the region as a whole to achieve their financial development goals, they must increase productivity and become even more inclusive.

Inclusivity – the practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunity and resources – is also a key tool to achieving the maximum amount of growth and development of a country and its people, which will in turn make it more resilient.

The human development index – a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), using three factors: life expectancy, average income and education – gave TT a grade of 0.814, increasing its grade by 0.10 from its 2020 score and placing it 60th out of 193 countries.

But TT still has a long way to go to develop to its highest potential. There are still disparities in the levels of productivity and inclusion of women and people of colour.

Decline in productivity, need for more inclusion

Panellists Dr Eric Parrado Herrera, chief economist and general manager of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Therese Turner-Jones, acting vice president of operations at Caribbean Development Bank (CDB); Bernardo Requena, director representative at the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF); and Petr Kakubik, financial stability adviser at the International Monetary Fund’s Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC), highlighted their roles as multilateral institutions in the financial development of TT and the region.

Requena pointed out CAF’s intention to focus on productivity, highlighting gaps in productivity and female participation in the workforce.

Pointing to a graph which showed details of women in the labour market in 2011, he highlighted the correlation between participation in the workforce and schooling, particularly in rural areas.

"What you see there is that in rural areas, women tend to go to school less than expected, and in those areas, they participate less in the labour market," he said. "There is a very strong relationship between years of schooling and participation in the labour market for women."

He also noted that TT’s productivity is 60 per cent lower than that of the US, with metrics between labour, capital and productivity trending negative figures over the past few years.

"Of the nine most important sectors of the country, seven had very low productivity and only two had high productivity, which were energy and trade," he said.

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