Minister

 

Senator the Honourable Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie was appointed as Minister of Planning and the Economy on May 11, 2011.

 

Minister Tewarie has served Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean region in areas of public policy, public and private sector governance and education.  In Trinidad and Tobago, Minister Tewarie served as a Member of Parliament and as Minister of Industry, Enterprise and Tourism and Leader of Government Business in the House of Representatives from 1986 to 1991.  Regarding public policy, he served on a number of boards of which included the Fiscal Incentives Committee for Petroleum and Natural Gas Industry Investment as Chairman in 1998, the National Curriculum Review and Education Committee in 1998, as a committee member on the Cabinet Appointed Divestment Committee for State Enterprises in 1998 and 1999.  In the private sector The Minister served on the Board of Directors of Republic Bank Limited from 1997 to 2009 and Trinidad Publishing Company from 2001 to 2008. 

 

With regards to education, Minister Tewarie served as the Chairman of the National Institute of Higher Education, Research and Science and Technology (NIHERST); from 1999 to 2001 he served as the Director of the National Training Agency; as well as Director of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) from 2001 to 2007.  The UWI Institute of Business, now known as the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business was under his leadership as Executive Director from 1992 to 2001, after which Minister Tewarie became the Pro Vice Chancellor and Campus Principal of the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine from the period 2001 to 2007.  From 2007 to his appointment as a Government Minister in 2011, Minister Tewarie remained on campus as the Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development for the University as well as founder and Director of the Institute of Critical Thinking.  The Minister also served as the Chairman of the Tertiary Education Committee for the National Vision 2020 Committee and produced a policy document which was accepted.  The Honourable Minister was also a member of the Caribbean Court of Justice Trust Fund and he was invited to deliver the sixth lecture in the Distinguished CARICOM Lecture Series in 2003.

 

Dr. Tewarie is a Fulbright Scholar who has studied at Northwestern University, University of Chicago and the Pennsylvania State University for his BA, MA and PhD respectively.  He has also studied leadership at the Said School of Business, Oxford University and as a Queens Royal College (QRC) Old Boy was inducted into the QRC Hall of Honour.

 

As Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development at UWI he was responsible for managing implementation of the 2007-2012 Strategic Plan and has led collaborations with Microsoft to develop a tracking system to monitor performance and implementation of the Strategic Plan. 

 

Recently, he has led a worldwide, internet based policy discussion on “Designing Sustainable Funding Systems for Tertiary Education for Small States”.  Following discussions and revision, UNESCO will publish the policy brief as a formal UNESCO policy position on the subject.  In a forthcoming book to be published by UNESCO, Dr. Tewarie has written two (2) chapters; one on the regional tertiary system and the second on funding tertiary education systems in small states.

 

Minister Tewarie has crossed disciplinary barriers in his writing.  He has written a book on “Higher Education Governance in the Twenty First Century University” (with Dennis Gayle, A. Quinton White & Eric Ashe, 2003).  In 2007 he published another on “Trade, Investment, and Development in the Contemporary Caribbean” with Dr. Roger Hosein (Ian Randle Publishing).  In that same year he also published “V.S. Naipaul Revisited: Ethnicity, Marginality and the Triumph of Individual Will” also published by Ian Randle.  Minister Tewarie has written numerous articles on culture, education and development issues as well as producing two documentary films on the novelist and writer V.S. Naipaul.