Sean Nero

An­drew Sab­ga, pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, says Gov­ern­ment must de­vise prop­er poli­cies to en­sure good gov­er­nance prac­tices among busi­ness­es in T&T. But he did not rule out the role of the pri­vate sec­tor, in­clud­ing the Cham­ber, in pro­tect­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of the in­dus­try in light of the col­lapse and CL Fi­nan­cial and Hin­du Cred­it Union.

The on­go­ing com­mis­sion of en­quiry in this fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle is re­veal­ing nu­mer­ous cas­es of man­age­ment in­ef­fi­cien­cies and in some cas­es greed which led to the fail­ure of the com­pa­nies, caus­ing the State to in­ject $20 bil­lion CL Fi­nan­cial in an ef­fort to save the in­vest­ment of de­pos­i­tors.

Sab­ga was speak­ing at Tues­day's gala awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Hilton Trinidad, host­ed by the Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment, to cel­e­brate the 60 com­pa­nies that re-in­vent­ed them­selves to be­come mod­ern-day sym­bols of ex­cel­lence.

Sab­ga said, "One can­not un­der­es­ti­mate the im­por­tance of good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, which is the foun­da­tion for sus­tain­able busi­ness. We must now look at for­mal­is­ing the process, through prop­er gov­ern­ment di­rec­tive and fur­ther pri­vate-sec­tor part­ner­ship with the pub­lic sec­tor, to con­tin­ue the ef­forts of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­ty in T&T."

He added, "As we look back through the past 50 years, we see that those com­pa­nies which con­tin­ue to suc­ceed to­day have placed em­pha­sis on strong cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and have made their core val­ues and even our na­tion's watch­words-Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance-the back­bone of their com­pa­nies' poli­cies and pro­ce­dures.

We need to en­sure, as busi­ness prac­ti­tion­ers, that we all make a com­mit­ment to good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and in­cor­po­rate eth­i­cal be­hav­iour in our busi­ness strat­e­gy, op­er­a­tions and cul­ture, so that those who suc­ceed us can stand proud and car­ry on the great lega­cy, we have cre­at­ed."

Sab­ga called for more com­pa­nies to em­brace the con­cept of cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. For those al­ready on board, he urged them to go be­yond mere oblig­a­tion as re­quired by the law and show a gen­uine con­cern, not on­ly for the en­vi­ron­ment, but for the na­tion. Do­ing busi­ness in an eth­i­cal way was in the in­ter­est of the wider com­mu­ni­ty, he said, and com­pa­nies must con­tin­ue to find ways to give back to the peo­ple of T&T, who have been good to them.

He said: "Fifty years ago, in 1962, the way busi­ness was con­duct­ed was vast­ly dif­fer­ent from what it is to­day. In the past half-cen­tu­ry, ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy have dras­ti­cal­ly im­proved the way we all con­duct busi­ness. Busi­ness process­es have changed and made or­gan­i­sa­tion more ef­fi­cient.

"At the same time, tech­nol­o­gy has opened lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, al­low­ing busi­ness­es to com­mu­ni­cate and col­lab­o­rate be­yond bor­ders with ease. "Col­lab­o­ra­tion is the fu­ture of the busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness as com­pa­nies be­come more in­no­v­a­tive, con­nect to peo­ple bet­ter and over­all act faster in the 'flat­tened' mar­ket­place of to­day's glob­al, econ­o­my," he said.