TRINIDAD and Tobago should combine and harness the creative and entrepreneurial skills of the country’s two major racial groups to form a new type of economy which would flourish after oil and gas reserves are exhausted, according to a US-trained Trinidad scholar.

Daniel de Lima Jr has drawn up an alternative economic model which he says the Government should adopt to prevent the country from sliding into decline and misery.

In a position paper which he plans to present to the government, de Lima suggests that the government set aside funds to operate a geriatric service for North Americans and a series of offshore industrial parks.

This, he said, would form a part of a plan to rescue Trinidad and Tobago from what he called the effects of the “Dutch disease,” an economic condition that stifles initiative and is averse to taking risks.

“Gas and oil supplies could run out in 30 to 40 years time and because Trinidad and Tobago is so dependent on revenues from their export and their many downstream products like ammonia and aluminum, the transition from an oil dependent economy to a sustainable one is extremely difficult,” he wrote.

De Lima said that about 90 percent of the country’s revenues are based on oil and gas and Trinidad and Tobago’s survival after they are exhausted depends on a sequenced artificial plan which would take over 50 years to implement.

Under his proposal, “a fast and direct approach could be implemented without having to go through the evolutionary slow process of ‘trial and error’ and keeping in mind that the extinction of the weak is the major part (99.9 percent) of evolution.

“We must inculcate a paradigm shift into a new set of values and instead of development through social and politically slow evolutionary processes, we must plan revolutionary development and lead/teach in the political process,” he wrote.

“Our politicians must lead much more than follow a known road, he added.

“We must cut a new path and invest in it to become a major highway leading to development through what would seem to be the adverse environment; risk avoidance.

“If we use an engineered direct approach, our future could be extremely bright.

“However, if we wait for the changes of emerging needs to shape our destiny, we will end up knowing what we need when the money from hydrocarbons is exhausted and then lack the money to make the investment for the needed changes.

“This calls for bold revolutionary leadership.

“If we do not meet our target on or before time, the economic contraction will shift political focus from economics based on investment in innovation to one of short-term survival or going with the flow again, so common in weak democracies.

“The process of developing a new visionary society would be politically scary.

“To replace the present leadership with a weak leader from the opposition is futile.

He will be elected by a needy population willing to sacrifice their future for short-term pain alleviation, but the society will crash economically in any case.

“The next generation will have no other political choices and be unable to press forward because of the lack of funds and this will send a “failure” signal to our entrepreneurs and will lead to a major brain drain and capital flight.

“That will be the last nail in the coffin.

“The desperate farmer in a quest for land will revert to slash and burn, the manatee and turtle and others will be eaten to extinction, a crime wave tsunami and the raped environment will assure that tourism is not an option.

“Trinidad and Tobago, as we know it, will cease to exist and a form of Hatification will emerge.”

De Lima said his proposal is aimed at avoiding doom and optimising opportunity and hope,

De Lima suggested a modified Israeli plan which adds three new institutions that work with and feed into one another.

Besides being drivers of the modified “plan,” the suggested facilities are all independent profit centres.

He suggested the establishment of a Long-Term Care/Medical Tourism facility, a Business Incubator/Industrial Park and a Marketing Facility which would all be market/profit driven and outside of the energy sector.

“The market driven symbiosis is either based on national fortes or creates fortes where needed.”

From the submitted inventions and innovations, the plan selects the best profit-driven, export-business ideas and carries them step-by-step to new businesses and public investment opportunities.

De Lima also said that as Trinidad and Tobago becomes developed, it will evolve into a gateway of interaction between North and South America.

“The Dutch disease from our energy economy fosters an adverse environment for evolving the appropriate institutions and practices for development. Being small exacerbates the problem. The propose plan resolves all these problems.

“The specific modifications of the Israeli plan are designed for our location to produce major sustainable exports in a globally competitive market, and will enable us to thrive even with the above mentioned business environment.

“We have the money, brains, democratic institutions, and leadership to become developed if the correct strategy, drivers and environment are created.

“Our vital LNG links with the USA are there to be exploited.

“This USA energy-dependency relationship could be negotiated to guarantee Trinidad and Tobago wider access to USA’s services markets.”

De Lima said his plan could be merged with the PNM Government’s Vision 2020 “to form a competition enabled symbiosis in our develop-mental objectives.”

He said the government should fund and facilitate business activity so that an artificial “non-Dutch diseased environment” may create and grow institutions, skills and businesses that will be viable and globally competitive in the post “peak gas/oil” period.

He said that Trinidad and Tobago has a brain-bank of foreign and local graduates trained in several developed large countries; mainly the USA, UK and Canada and has developed a healthy democracy.

“The country has two major ethnic groups and one tends to be culturally inclined towards entrepreneurship and the other is culturally inclined towards creativity. Together, they could form a business formation and operations symbiosis.

“We must now create a programmne that makes ‘creativity’ lucrative and fosters a combination of ‘creativity’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ into new businesses.

“We are aware that we must change our terminal resource based business habits to those with sustainable foundations and lifestyles.”