Asha Javeed

"I hope this is not like a quiz. I hope I pass," joked new­ly mint­ed cham­ber pres­i­dent, An­drew Sab­ga, as he sat down to be in­ter­viewed by jour­nal­ists last Wednes­day at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. Sab­ga's self-dep­re­cat­ing hu­mour was a sur­prise. More­so was the ease in which he tran­si­tioned from tak­ing pic­tures and hav­ing his shoul­ders pat­ted re­peat­ed­ly, while min­gling with T&T's "who's who," at the Cham­ber's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, to ac­com­mo­dat­ing jour­nal­ists' prob­ing ques­tions. The busi­ness-bred chair­man of Carib Brew­ery Ltd is the last child of the Sab­ga busi­ness fam­i­ly, which owns a ma­jor­i­ty stake in the ANSA McAL group, and the first to be cham­ber pres­i­dent. He's ea­ger for the task ahead. "My fa­ther once said to me: if you en­joy what you do, you'll nev­er work a day in your life. I have lived by those prin­ci­ples. I tru­ly, tru­ly en­joy what I do," he said, re­fer­ring to his fa­ther, Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, founder and chair­man emer­i­tus of the ANSA McAL Group.

At 46, the younger Sab­ga jok­ing­ly point­ed out while he al­ready has a few white hairs in his cap of black, he's learned to hide them well. Stress isn't a wel­come vis­i­tor in his life. "To be hon­est, I don't think there's a day when I show up in the of­fice and don't learn some­thing from the peo­ple that I work with. From the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer at the front of the guard booth to the guy clean­ing the ground to the ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port. I don't think there's a day where I haven't en­joyed work­ing. Even the most stress­ful of days, there are days when you learn." One of those learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences was in De­cem­ber 2004 when Carib Brew­ery shut down over wage dis­putes. "I would say it was an un­for­tu­nate event. I don't re­gret it, but I think it was an un­for­tu­nate event which es­ca­lat­ed and got out of con­trol," he re­called.

"What I learnt from that, though, was how de­pen­dent the econ­o­my is, by ex­ten­sion, on Carib as a com­pa­ny, And just how im­por­tant Carib was to many es­tab­lish­ments through­out the coun­try when we ac­tu­al­ly came to a grind­ing halt and were un­able to sup­ply. Most bars, even though they had oth­er forms of al­co­hol, it wasn't worth their while to open for busi­ness. It shows you how im­por­tant our prod­uct was to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. It was an eye-open­er."

Sab­ga's seem­ing­ly op­ti­mistic phi­los­o­phy ap­plies to his home life, too. His fam­i­ly keeps him ground­ed and his fa­ther is his in­spi­ra­tion. A fa­ther of five-who range in age from 20 to six-Sab­ga de­scribed his chil­dren as "my rea­son for be­ing." Sab­ga ad­mits that be­ing born in­to a busi­ness fam­i­ly might have opened doors, but he worked through the sys­tem to gain well-round­ed ex­po­sure to sales, mar­ket­ing and fi­nance. He start­ed at ANSA's head of­fice, went to Carib Brew­ery, spent 11 years at Carib Glass­works, which is on the same com­pound as the brew­ery, and is back at the brew­ery again. "What I do is a lot of fun. The brew­ing and the bev­er­age sec­tor is a very ex­cit­ing part. Our prod­ucts are in­volved in every­thing, so we are every­where." His prized per­son­al as­set: his peo­ple skills.

That claim can raise a few eye­brows on mere ob­ser­va­tion of the straight-faced, suit-and-Rolex-wear­ing, pres­i­dent. It gains mer­it on con­ver­sa­tion, which can flow from the gov­ern­ment of the day, pick­ing out a col­lege for his daugh­ter, the best spot to cast a line or even his read­ing of the mur­der of eight year-old Daniel Guer­ra from Gas­par­il­lo. It's his per­son­al skills, a de­serv­ing boast, that Sab­ga says will mark his pres­i­den­cy. "My abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate and work with all ar­eas: gov­ern­ment, con­stituents. Some­thing that is great­ly need­ed in our cham­ber is for us to get back to fo­cus­ing on the con­stituents which we rep­re­sent. It is ab­solute­ly im­per­a­tive that we re­fo­cus. "If you saw what our vi­sion and mis­sion state­ment had in it, it very much re­fo­cus­es the or­gan­i­sa­tion back to­wards our con­stituents and mem­bers."He's tak­ing it in stride, hav­ing been vice-chair­man for the past two years un­der An­gel­la Per­sad.

His fo­cus ar­eas are:

1. Crime

2. Stim­u­la­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my

3. Gov­er­nance

4. Na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

5. Reg­u­la­to­ry re­form

Sab­ga ob­served that the is­sues weren't pulled out of a hat, but were dis­cussed and came out of var­i­ous con­sul­ta­tions with cham­ber mem­bers. "And I would say to you, num­ber one on every­one's mind has been crime; the econ­o­my comes sec­ond." And while he'd lament­ed the coun­try's crime rate is a hin­drance to lo­cal busi­ness, he ob­served that there has been some im­prove­ment. "We have seen an im­prove­ment in the crime sit­u­a­tion. By no means are we any­where close to where we the cit­i­zens and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, by ex­ten­sion, are hap­py. But I would say to you, there has been a marked im­prove­ment we've seen." "Crime is the en­e­my of so­cial or­der, and not un­ex­pect­ed­ly, it now wages war on our coun­try's com­pet­i­tive­ness." Asked what he would rec­om­mend to im­prove the sit­u­a­tion, Sab­ga quot­ed an idea put for­ward by past pres­i­dent Ian Col­lier: to en­sure that po­lice are con­stant­ly out and about. "The crim­i­nals use our roads to get to and from their lo­ca­tions and their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. If our po­lice are fre­quent­ing the roads, pa­trolling our streets and up­hold­ing the laws, even the most ba­sic of all, traf­fic laws, lit­ter laws, by do­ing those sim­ple things, it will make a sig­nif­i­cant dent, in my opin­ion, in the re­duc­tion of crime. It is the cham­ber's po­si­tion that po­lice need to be out and about polic­ing the street and be ever present," he said.

While he was vo­cal on the is­sue of crime, he was more con­ser­v­a­tive on the per­for­mance of the Gov­ern­ment. He re­it­er­at­ed a quote by Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz, dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress, that it'd tak­en the Gov­ern­ment ten months to ac­tu­al­ly set­tle down as there are dif­fi­cul­ties with gov­ern­ing. "I mean if you think it's dif­fi­cult to man­age a busi­ness, imag­ine man­ag­ing a coun­try, an econ­o­my. It has been a long ten months. Many com­pa­nies have felt the im­pact." Sab­ga said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty "had to adapt to the prob­lem," but he "be­lieves that the cor­ner has been turned."

"You're see­ing a re­lease of eco­nom­ic ten­sion and you're start­ing to see the ma­chin­ery work­ing. The boards have been ap­point­ed. The state boards are now op­er­at­ing again, you're star­ing to see cash flow­ing again from the Gov­ern­ment to busi­ness­es that have been do­ing busi­ness with the Gov­ern­ment. So I think it's a step in the right di­rec­tion."

To this end, he said the door is open for con­sul­ta­tion with the Gov­ern­ment in an at­tempt to en­hance the re­la­tion­ship. Sab­ga, an avid fish­er­man, ex­plained that one is­sue in which he would sup­port the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) was on the "long over­due" Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill with some mod­i­fi­ca­tion on stew­ard­ship. "If you are, in fact, do­ing the right thing now, you should be ex­empt­ed from the leg­is­la­tion. In oth­er words, the leg­is­la­tion is there to in­duce man­u­fac­tur­ers with the pol­luters pay prin­ci­ple. If you are present­ly clean­ing the mess, you should not be held."

About An­drew N Sab­ga

An­drew Sab­ga is the sec­tor head, bev­er­age, at the ANSA McAL Group. He was the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd from Au­gust 2003 to April 2007. He has more than 20 years of in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor of the Group, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly held se­nior man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions at Carib Brew­ery Ltd, as well as di­rec­tor­ships at Carib Glass­works Ltd, Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd, Carib Brew­ery Ltd and Trinidad Match Ltd.

He was the for­mer chair­man of Al­stons Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, and is cur­rent­ly the chair­man of Carib Brew­ery Ltd, Grena­da Brew­eries Ltd, Carib Brew­ery (St Kitts & Nevis) Ltd and Carib Glass­works Ltd.

He was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed a di­rec­tor of the par­ent board of ANSA McAL Ltd. He holds an MBA in mar­ket­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi and a BSc-BA, mar­ket­ing/fi­nance from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty.