ewart s williams : opportunities available for business growth in trinidad and tobago address by mr ewart s williams, governor of the central bank of trinidad and tobago, at the employers ’ consultative association conference, port - of - spain, 21 january 2010. * * * i would like to commend the employers ’ consultative association ( eca ) for staging this conference that brings together the employer community to exchange ideas on how best they could build and sustain their competitiveness in today ’ s highly volatile environment. this discussion is most timely since the economy is now at an important inflexion point, at which we need to devise new strategies to maintain our growth momentum and living standards, over the medium term. it is worth noting that we are essentially a private sector economy and that real economic growth on a sustainable basis could only be generated by the private sector. i would go further to add that while the energy sector has brought us to where we are, given its future prospects, it is going to be the non - energy private sector, to take us the rest of the journey. the private sector now faces several challenges but a whole host of opportunities. as you know, the economy registered very rapid growth in the period 2001 – 2007, when real gdp increased at an annual rate of 7. 6 per cent. while growth in the period was driven by the expansion of the energy sector, reflecting in the main, the establishment of liquid gas and other petro - chemical facilities, the non - energy sector also expanded briskly – at a rate of 5. 4 per cent per year. what was interesting though was that the major growth drivers in the non - energy sector were construction, banking and real estate, and distribution ( wholesale and retail ). manufacturing did reasonably well but on the basis of domestic demand, with the data suggesting that there was a leveling - off of non - energy exports. i should note, ladies and gentlemen, that the behaviour of the economy in this period of surging oil and gas prices was not atypical for a resource - based economy and in fact, it was consistent with a thesis called “ dutch disease ”. in line with this “ thesis ”, the buoyant energy sector spawned a boom in government revenues and expenditures, high inflation and wage increases, a loss of competitiveness of the non - energy export sector and increased investment in non - tradable, such as, real estate and retail establishments ( stores, and restaurants and so on )

you are, of course, distinct from supervision ; you are the heads, the reasoning, the human element, while supervision is essentially black or white, there are hardly any shades of grey. today ’ s central banker no longer enjoys obscurity. the spotlight has been beaming on us as supervisors for the last six years. supervision of the financial system is a task, a responsibility and, perhaps at times, a burden, we must carry for our countries. before 2008, the typical person with a savings account, a mortgage, or an insurance policy, never really cared about who was keeping an eye on the people and institutions managing their money. now we are more scrutinized than the financial players themselves. no regulation, no matter how sophisticated, can fully anticipate all potential situations. as supervisors we now have to look at the entire financial ecosystem over which we preside. we must not only pay particular attention to the individual trees but, more importantly, to how their branches intertwine with nearby trees, forming the entire forest and supporting its existence. in this financial ecosystem there are some who may want to play with fire ; and don ’ t care if they burn down the entire forest. our success, as supervisors, is measured by managing, or even better, preventing fires from actually starting. when they first occur, these may be small bis central bankers ’ speeches fires or sparks that we can quickly stamp out. such prevention is, of course, much cheaper than the billions it would cost to resuscitate an entire ecosystem. here at home, the clico fire has so far cost the taxpayers of trinidad and tobago over us $ 3 billion dollars. three billion us dollars, that ’ s more than the size of eight of our neighboring economies in the caribbean. in trinidad and tobago, that us $ 3 billion could have built twenty new, state - of - the - art children ’ s hospitals, or built and fully outfitted one thousand new primary schools ( more than double the existing number of primary schools ), or purchase medicine for all our major hospitals for the next decade. clico also damaged confidence in the financial sector and left psychological scars on many citizens, in trinidad and tobago and in your countries, as well. successful supervision happens behind the scenes. it is what the public will never ever see. we will never be thanked for this job, because no one is supposed to see these sparks, far less smell or see smoke. but when we save the day