The Trade Ministry's fretting about a claim that as many as 6,000 retail small and medium businesses - a third of the total registered - will remain permanently closed when restrictions on the retail trade are lifted on Monday is misguided annoyance.
Instead of fussing about the estimate offered by the Confederation of Regional Business Chambers, the ministry should have been busy doing its own analysis of the local business landscape after extended lockdowns.
It's been clear even to casual observers that many businesses have shut down for good, while others have made dramatic pivots to capture business.
Some closures have been strategic. In February, Excellent Stores announced the closure of its Arima and Trincity Mall branches in the wake of its downtown Port of Spain closure in December - limiting its brick-and-mortar presence to just three locations in north, central and south Trinidad.
But the company had been pursuing online shopping since 2014, and quickly scaled up its listings online from 8,000 to 27,000 products. CEO Alex Siu Chong planned to retrain staff to meet the growing online focus of the company.
Excellent Stores was a finalist in the TT Chamber of Industry of Commerce's Champions of Business technology awards in 2020.
For every less savvy or lucky business that closes down, there is an impact on the economy beyond its absence. Jobs are lost, vendors have fewer outlets that offer wholesale products; competition and choice are diminished.
These are not insignificant issues, particularly when many businesses are turning to workplace automation to manage routine tasks, further reducing employment opportunities.
The government must, in partnership with stakeholders, redefine its role as a majority employer to become a more active enabler of entrepreneurship and private enterprise for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
MSMEs are generally not well served by the traditional finance sector, and even government agencies created to address their needs have been slow to understand the dramatic changes that have rapidly altered business practices.
The government cannot be all things to all MSMEs, but there is more that it can do.
TT has been glacial in its approach to fintech legislation and stumbled along with something as basic to a digital economy as electronic payments.
The government must decouple itself from micro-engineering the TT economy, create an environment that encourages innovation, rewards retraining and retooling for established businesses, and create a legislative infrastructure that encourages digitally-driven diversification.
This isn't something that needs to be invented. There are existing examples, such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development's Empretec programme, which supports entrepreneurship capacity development through the shared experience of participating nations.
Governments are not entrepreneurs. They are the gatekeepers of the common good, builders of the legislative infrastructure that makes entrepreneurship possibl
