Thursday, January 30, 2014

CHAMBER BLASTS GOV’T - AGAIN!

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here we go again! Ease of doing business is all good and dandy. But, isn't this being too uni-dimensional in scope? Are these two gentlemen suffering from not seeing the forest for the trees?

January 30, 2014 at 1:00 PM
Anonymous said...

at 1:00 PM - what does that even mean? Would you care to elaborate.

January 31, 2014 at 12:20 AM
Anonymous said...

These two gentlemen are very old-school. They are harping on a subject that is NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT for generating, building and creating new business!

One missing dimension here is the creation of the necessary HUMAN CAPITAL together with a business eco-system: human capital formation, supportive business legislation and business infrastructure (ease-of-doing-business, customs procedures with greater automation for easier documentation, clearance and payments for greater turnaround time), generous tax incentives for attracting TECHNOLOGY-BASED entrepreneurs (LOCAL, foreign and nationals living overseas) to explore the development of the new BUSINESS and related (IT) ideas HERE IN SAINT LUCIA!

The focus on the ease of doing business alone and by itself will NOT encourage, regional (Anyway, they don't think this far.) and international STRATEGIC BUSINESS (production) PARTNERSHIPS.

And because our HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT infrastructure is NOT EVEN past its embryonic stages vis-à-vis the requirements of meaningful participation in a GLOBALIZED world, one of the goodly gentlemen is simply singing his swan song, and the other is chiming in as an echo-chamber.

Sorry. "Chamber of Commerce" you said?

January 31, 2014 at 9:49 AM
Anonymous said...

The private sector is always sitting on its hands looking for government handouts in the form of corporate welfare. Some pivotal questions emerge from this:

(1) What are the private sector companies doing with their profits?

(2) What are those companies themselves doing to further the expansion of a vibrant, efficient and effective private sector? (The entire sector was not even up-to-snuff with the necessary computerization readiness with regards to VAT implementation. Do the managers of these companies ever engage in scenario planning and strategic management? Ever?)

(3) Is this "Circus of Commerce" [Read: Chamber of Commerce] simply funding the election campaigns of political parties, as its only cost-cutting approach, especially those parties most likely to further wage and salary compression? Or, and in addition, is it those parties that will reduce company taxation in exchange for just low-paying jobs, that keep a broad swathe of the working population (approximately 40% of the workforce) going from cradle to grave as our working poor? (Witness how TNT's private sector is "recolonizing" Saint Lucia!)

(4) Where today is corporate social responsibility in Saint Lucia? Relatedly, does the "Circus of Commerce" [Read: Chamber of Commerce], a society of essentially glorified commission agents, aware of its role and its responsibilities to spearhead and FUND in partnership with the government of the day ... some of the necessary pro-business environmental initiatives?

(6) Where, over the years has been Saint Lucia's achievements in commercial expansion in exports, in export performance and readiness, other than in bananas, since that body (the Circus) has been operating, ever since the country gained the quasi-independent status of Associated Statehood, but that body itself operating as the political campaign financing ATM for essentially ... one political party? Was this investment largely MISPLACED? Misguided even?

It is not good enough and it is basically intellectually dishonest to berate this administration, when it is one that initiated the "one stop" policy of doing business in Saint Lucia, especially when there was absolutely NO FOLLOW-UP by the other political party, (forsooth aligned to the Circus), when during its hiatus, leadership in the current administration was sitting on the opposition benches!

The "one stop" policy is however not new. It is part of the foundation of Singaporean success model, which one long-standing political leader rejected in favour of the Taiwanese model.

Moreover, the intellectual bankruptcy of the last administration and its abdication of responsibility by not furthering the expansion of useful ideas related to the commercial sector, and now, the return of the Circus with the exact same tune as the last, all betray a lack of any progressive, new, and transformative ideas going forward.

February 2, 2014 at 6:47 AM
Anonymous said...

private sector are there to be independent and work for themselves. Tax profits at level so not as to disincentivise work.

Those taxes can be used for infrastructure of the country. That also assumes governement spend money wisely (roads, water, schools) and not on shitty vanity projects.

Lucia has the system set up wrong to encourage people to work for themselves.

February 3, 2014 at 2:14 AM
Anonymous said...

The private sector in Saint Lucia is woefully underdeveloped. This is so much so that it has been long ago been relegated to being just another feeder group for the business sector of TNT. Look at that country's latest M&A activity in the local market (cherry-picking the best performing assets in Saint Lucia). And this of course is largely no fault of any Saint Lucian government!

The local private sector's lobbying group, the Chamber of Commerce, betrays a mentality of just raking in profits and leaving all the heavy lifting for its own development on the shoulders of incumbent administrations.

Private sector-government initiatives ought NOT to come from government --- alone.

True indeed, incumbent administrations have the legislative authority to create, enhance and foster the nurturing environment for private sector growth and development. But ... if the private sector itself is coming up empty, in terms of innovative structures and systems, it is just not fair to simply and continually blame incumbent administrations for your own lack of developmental initiatives.

Government has stakeholders other than this largely motley crew of lazy-thinking middlemen, who see value creation (profits) largely in terms of breaking bulk through generational commission agencies!

Singapore's shinning example is in a class by itself. But look at for example, the other countries in the ASEAN nation group. Investigate the emerging markets of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Look at the other newly-minted emerging MINT nations and economies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey), is private sector growth and business development predicated on the expansion of the merchandizing, and the distributive trades and activities of the retail sector -- only? Come on! Give it a break!

Grow up, or at least get another hobby horse!

February 3, 2014 at 6:04 AM

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