Max:
Time to switch from gas to 'brains'
By Kristy Ramnarine
Trinidad Express
Port
Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
05 20 07
President George Maxwell Richards says it is urgent
that Trinidad and Tobago becomes more knowledge-based
instead of depending on oil and gas.
He was speaking during the opening of the Chinese
Business and Culture Week at the Arthur Lok Jack
Graduate School of Business, Mt Hope, on Monday
evening.
He said Trinidad and Tobago was facing a changing
world economy.
"Increasingly and whether citizens like it
or not, the world is more and more being made up
of societies in which economic value is derived
from knowledge, especially scientific and technical
knowledge," said Richards.
"We
must increasingly look for our future economic
and social well-being to products of the
human intellect rather than solely to products
which our soil can be made to nourish to produce,
or our petroleum and gas reservoirs to yield. Social
well-being to innovation and technology rather
than solely to reliance on exploitation of our
natural and physical resources, important though
this may be in the short and medium term."
The well-being of Trinidad and Tobago's higher
education system is of prime importance to the
country's economic future, added Richards.
He said while the tertiary level student enrolment
in the country had been growing rapidly in the
last five years, less than ten per cent of the
working-age population had achieved that level
of education.
"This compares with 38 per cent in the United
States, 36 per cent in Japan and 26 per cent in
South Korea," said Richards.
"As
a country, we invest much less than one per cent
of our GDP in higher education. While
this represents a substantial increase within recent
years, it is far behind the performance of countries
like Australia which invests 1.5 per cent, Canada,
2.3 per cent and the United States, 2.6 per cent."
Trinidad
Express
Wednesday, May 16th 2007
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