Tunapuna/Piarco leads the way

WE TALK A LOT about the responsibility of the Cabinet in promoting business.

We expect governments to handle things like foreign exchange, energy policy and taxation.

But there is also a key, often neglected, role to be played by local government, too.

We commend the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation, led by chairman Desell Josiah Austin, for this week highlighting the importance of corporations in economic development through its annual celebrations, which this year once again included a business breakfast and emphasised the region’s diverse residents and companies.

But we warn: officials must embrace the principle of supporting enterprise from the ground up, not just pay lip service to it now and then.

Mr Austin’s corporation has established what it calls a Local Economic Development (LED) Unit. It’s a bright idea.

The key objectives of this department include business attraction and retention, leveraging the community’s unique assets in tourism and destination marketing, and integrating sustainable practices into planning.

There are many practical ways councillors can support micro-, small- and medium-sized entities. They play a role in a range of matters, from permit approvals to safety and compliance. Of course, their bread-and-butter responsibilities – such as maintaining infrastructure, developing recreational spaces and public health initiatives – naturally feed into the economic viability of an area.

All these functions are even more relevant today, given possible changes to the funding of municipalities, which already receive anywhere between $61 million and $230 million each in direct subvention.

The additional taxation measures being implemented by the current administration, along with proposals for pay hikes for corporation officials, will require these regions to increase their efforts to ensure service delivery.

Local businesses – from the bakery on the corner to the office block down the street – provide valuable benefits. These workplaces collectively employ thousands of people. They are nimbler and are important catalysts for change.

Meanwhile, such entities have very specific needs that are not easily captured by national policymaking.

A good example is crime. The recent Eagle Eye project, which saw Tunapuna stores team up with the police to bolster CCTV coverage, is an instance of how community-level factors can be indispensable.

According to one of the last Central Statistical Office surveys, at least 2,882 businesses were in Tunapuna/Piarco alone, or just over ten per cent of the total number in Trinidad.

It makes sense for these kinds of firms to have even stronger synergies with communities to make use of labour pools and resources that might otherwise slip beneath the radar.

Local government should facilitate their development by creating a space in which all stakeholders feel they have a say and can have their needs addressed by officials who respond to the requirements of a community, and not just the top-down political imperatives of leaders sitting far away in Whitehall.

We need fiscal measures from above and growth from below.