Aleem Khan

As Mooni­lal Lalchan, vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion at At­lantic (for­mer­ly At­lantic LNG), takes the reins of the coun­try's old­est and largest cham­ber of com­merce, con­ti­nu­ity and "build­ing bridges" will be at the top of his agen­da.

Lalchan was a cham­ber board di­rec­tor for the past six years, most re­cent­ly as se­nior vice pres­i­dent.

Asked about his plans for his tenure as pres­i­dent dur­ing an April 20 in­ter­view at the cham­ber's West­moor­ings head of­fice, he said: "It's all about "con­tin­u­ing the good work of the cham­ber."

He said he plans to stay faith­ful to cham­ber's 2012 to 2014 strate­gic plan and con­tin­ue to cham­ber's "fo­cus on crime, the econ­o­my, gov­er­nance and trans­paren­cy, small and mi­cro en­ter­prise de­vel­op­ment and To­ba­go de­vel­op­ment."

Dur­ing his term, he said he wants to "con­tin­ue to build bridges for the com­mon good of the coun­try and what that means is the cham­ber is in a unique po­si­tion where it has the largest mem­ber­ship and brings all the oth­er sec­tors to­geth­er" and can work on im­prov­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the coun­try, to­geth­er.

It sounds easy, but "pulling all the play­ers to­geth­er" to make T&T "one of the most com­pet­i­tive coun­tries in the world," as Lalchan would have it, would re­quire busi­ness­es to act un­selfish­ly to help oth­ers to ac­cess new mar­kets.

"My view is that we need to go back to what we have put in our coat of arms: to­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve. To me, it all goes hand in hand with how we have to be build­ing bridges," he said.

There are a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that T&T busi­ness­es can take ad­van­tage of if they work to­geth­er, Lalchan said.

"One com­pa­ny may have ac­cess to cer­tain mar­kets that an­oth­er com­pa­ny may not. How do you re­al­ly get the com­pa­nies to un­selfish­ly work to­geth­er to break down some of these bar­ri­ers, to build bridges, to get to these mar­kets, whether it's re­gion­al­ly or ex­tra-re­gion­al­ly."

Small ship, big bor­ders

Lalchan said "be­cause we are a small ship, that does not pre­vent us from com­pet­ing in a world en­vi­ron­ment."

He gave ex­am­ples of com­pa­nies like SM Jaleel that has bro­ken in­to new mar­kets glob­al­ly. He said T&T has many glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive com­pa­nies. His own em­ploy­er, At­lantic, is the largest liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) plant in the West­ern hemi­sphere and the sev­enth largest LNG ex­porter in the world, and ex­ports to more than 20 coun­tries. Groups like Neal & Massy and ANSA McAL are al­so very com­pet­i­tive, he said.

The new cham­ber pres­i­dent al­so be­lieves the key to the much pur­sued goal of "di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my" is in the book bags of T&T's school chil­dren. As T&T at­tempts to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my to sup­port cul­tur­al and cre­ative in­dus­tries, the tourism sec­tor, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and food se­cu­ri­ty, Lalchan thinks pri­ma­ry schools are a good place to start.

"Many times when you sit and dis­cuss with young peo­ple com­ing out of uni­ver­si­ty, you find there is a sense of: 'I've gone to uni­ver­si­ty. I've got­ten my de­gree. I've done my MBA and I can't get a job.' I think we need to take a step back­wards, and look at what's tak­ing place with our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, not that it's poor by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, but what can we do to align some of these di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ini­tia­tives back to our pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools? Start get­ting our kids and chil­dren aligned to some of these di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ar­eas, so that the ca­reer they choose would be in line."

If T&T wants its peo­ple to get in­to ma­rine in­dus­tries, Lalchan said "we should ask our­selves: what are we do­ing to get our young kids in­volved in the ma­rine in­dus­try, so that they go to uni­ver­si­ty and they know that when they come out, there is some­thing there wait­ing for them? It's not all about a first de­gree, a sec­ond de­gree, a third de­gree, but get­ting them in the right po­si­tion to take ad­van­tage of some of the things that are go­ing to be tak­ing place, and that's one of the things I'd re­al­ly want to see us push, and build bridges on."

He said: "It may be long term, but we have to start now be­cause if you don't start now, you'd al­ways be play­ing catch up." He said that di­ver­si­fy­ing with­out train­ing peo­ple to take the jobs in a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my would not be good be­cause "what it does is that you re­al­ly put your na­tion­als at a dis­ad­van­tage, be­cause if you go in­to these ar­eas with­out hav­ing a cadre of peo­ple with the com­pe­ten­cies" to take the jobs, hir­ing for­eign na­tion­als would be im­per­a­tive.

Lalchan who, fresh out of St Stephen's Col­lege in Princes Town, want­ed ini­tial­ly to be a me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer, is an ad­vo­cate for lan­guage learn­ing. "We need to gear up our stu­dents to look at an­oth­er lan­guage," he said, adding that Span­ish has to take the front burn­er.

"To pen­e­trate some of these mar­kets, you must be able to speak the lan­guage and un­der­stand the cul­ture. Those are some of the things we want to en­cour­age in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem," he said, so that "if we have to look at Latin Amer­i­ca, you must be able to speak Span­ish."

Work ex­pe­ri­ence

Af­ter at­tend­ing St Stephen's Col­lege, Lalchan start­ed work­ing at De­loitte and Touche, a firm of char­tered ac­coun­tants. As it is for many as­pir­ing ac­coun­tants, this meant study­ing (for AC­CA) and work­ing. He worked at De­loitte and Touche for 18 months. He then went on to the Neal and Massy Group, where he worked with Grell and Com­pa­ny as an in­ter­nal au­dit as­sis­tant, while study­ing.

He then worked for Trinidad Tesoro in San­ta Flo­ra. While in Tesoro's em­ploy in the in­ter­nal au­dit de­part­ment, the com­pa­ny gave him a schol­ar­ship to com­plete his AC­CA.

Tesoro even­tu­al­ly pro­mot­ed him to ac­coun­tant and then to se­nior ac­coun­tant. He went on to be­come a se­nior ac­coun­tant at Trin­mar, which was then a joint ven­ture be­tween, Tex­a­co, Trin­toc, and Tesoro. He left Trin­mar to go to Plipde­co, where he was the cor­po­rate ser­vices man­ag­er. He went there to take the com­pa­ny to mar­ket, to raise eq­ui­ty, at which he said he was quite suc­cess­ful.

Af­ter two-and-a-half years at Plipde­co, Lalchan said he was head-hunt­ed to be­come the fi­nan­cial comp­trol­ler at At­lantic LNG, which was then now start­ing op­er­a­tions in Trinidad. He was one of on­ly two lo­cals to hold se­nior po­si­tions, the oth­er se­nior the pub­lic re­la­tions man­ag­er.

"All the oth­er se­nior po­si­tions were held by ex­pats from the share­hold­er com­pa­nies," he said. The then vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion, an ex­pat, lat­er told him the fi­nan­cial comp­trol­ler was a se­nior po­si­tion al­ways ear­marked for an ex­pat. Lalchan's qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence earned him the po­si­tion.

While at At­lantic, he moved from fi­nan­cial comp­trol­ler to be­ing the first lo­cal vice pres­i­dent of plan­ning. He then took over the vice pres­i­den­cy of fi­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion, a po­si­tion which was pre­vi­ous­ly held by an ex­pat.

Har­vard train­ing

Mooni­lal's em­ploy­er At­lantic in­vest­ed in his ed­u­ca­tion and gave him a schol­ar­ship to do his Ex­ec­u­tive Mas­ter's of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (EM­BA) at Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty in Al­aba­ma, Unit­ed States. He said he was the on­ly for­eign stu­dent in the EM­BA pro­gramme, and proud­ly "grad­u­at­ed pret­ty high up in the class." He achieved a 4.0 grade point av­er­age (GPA), which means he got all As in his 15 sub­jects.

His next aca­d­e­m­ic ac­com­plish­ment was al­so "spon­sored ful­ly by At­lantic": the Ad­vanced Man­age­ment Pro­gramme (AMP) at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. That pro­gramme had 165 se­nior pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and heads of en­er­gy com­pa­nies, from all over the world. The AMP, still in ex­is­tence, was a nine-week live-in in­ten­sive pro­gramme in which the stu­dent does about 225 Har­vard cas­es. It was a pro­gramme de­signed for per­sons in busi­ness. His boss at the time was a Har­vard grad­u­ate and in­sist­ed Lalchan ben­e­fit from it.

On the top­ic of high­er am­bi­tions at At­lantic, Lalchan said since its in­cep­tion, the CEO po­si­tion has al­ways been filled by one of the com­pa­ny's share­hold­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It was BP in the ear­ly years, and now it is BG, he said.

He does not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a lo­cal tak­ing over At­lantic. "That may change one day," he said. Lalchan, who has act­ed as CEO on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, said the com­pa­ny has three ex­pats in se­nior man­age­ment, with 98 per cent of its em­ploy­ees be­ing Trinida­di­ans.

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