Hosein backs AI data centre MOU but says it’s ‘very early days’

Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein says the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed AI da­ta cen­tre could pro­vide a wel­come boost to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, but he warns the project is still in its ear­li­est stages.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Mon­day, Ho­sein said the da­ta cen­tre has the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change and cre­ate jobs if it be­comes an ex­port-ori­ent­ed busi­ness.

“Once it brings in for­eign ex­change for con­struc­tion and for run­ning the fa­cil­i­ty, if the out­put from the cen­tre helps to gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change, that is use­ful. And if it gen­er­ates jobs, that would be use­ful.”

He said the coun­try’s frag­ile econ­o­my needs more non-en­er­gy in­dus­tries that earn for­eign ex­change rather than con­sume it.

“We are at a frag­ile state in this econ­o­my where any non-en­er­gy ex­port-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty that gen­er­ates for­eign ex­change is a wel­come in­ter­ven­tion and a wel­come in­jec­tion.”

Ho­sein said he viewed the Gov­ern­ment’s three re­cent­ly signed Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing, in­clud­ing the AI da­ta cen­tre project, as “steps in the right di­rec­tion”, but cau­tioned that there is still a long way to go be­fore any of the projects be­come op­er­a­tional.

“We are a long way off, of course, from open­ing, but they are steps in the right di­rec­tion.”

He com­pared the stage of the projects to “pass­ing the ball from the keep­er to the last stop­per,” adding, “It’s very ear­ly days here.”

The Gov­ern­ment last week signed three MOUs cov­er­ing AI da­ta cen­tres and the re­fur­bish­ment and op­er­a­tion of the for­mer iron and steel plant at Point Lisas.

The AI da­ta cen­tre pro­pos­al has at­tract­ed scruti­ny from some ex­perts, who have raised con­cerns about its elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter de­mands, en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts and the need for greater trans­paren­cy on costs and ex­pect­ed eco­nom­ic re­turns. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have said those is­sues will be ad­dressed as the projects move be­yond the MOU stage.