The Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment re­cent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the World Bank, In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, the Eu­ro­pean Union and key gov­ern­ment Min­istries and Agen­cies to host an aware­ness ses­sion ti­tled Im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel.

This ini­tia­tive is a part of the gov­ern­ment's goal to im­prove T&T's glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and to re­duce the over­all costs and time of do­ing busi­ness lo­cal­ly.The main ob­jec­tive of the ses­sion was to en­sure that the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors are aware of and un­der­stand ef­forts be­ing made by the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers in the var­i­ous ar­eas that af­fect the coun­try's over­all com­pet­i­tive­ness rank­ings. Ac­cord­ing to the World Bank's 2013 Re­port T&T is ranked 69th out of 185 coun­tries in the over­all ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Trade Min­is­ter Bharath said the min­istry and its agen­cies have been reengi­neer­ing their sys­tems and process­es to re­move the im­ped­i­ments and ob­sta­cles that are un­at­trac­tive to lo­cal and for­eign in­vestors so as to ex­pand eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and in­vest­ments in T&T

Valenti­na Saltane, Pri­vate Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment Spe­cial­ist, World Bank, pre­sent­ed the key find­ings of the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness in T&T Re­port.

She out­lined the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the sur­vey, which in­clud­ed busi­ness in­di­ca­tors that de­ter­mine the ease of do­ing busi­ness, con­tract en­force­ment, get­ting a con­struc­tion per­mit, etc.The re­port pro­vid­ed short, medi­um and long term im­prove­ment rec­om­men­da­tions for the var­i­ous in­di­ca­tors.

Pre­sen­ta­tions were de­liv­ered on three key re­forms cur­rent­ly tak­ing place that af­fect the way busi­ness is done in T&T.

Pre­sent­ing on con­struc­tion per­mit re­form was Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, who out­lined projects, mech­a­nisms and leg­isla­tive re­forms be­ing un­der­tak­en to make the reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem for in­vest­ment open, trans­par­ent and ac­count­a­bles. Nicole Moo­nan, Deputy Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al (Ag.), Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs high­light­ed cur­rent ini­tia­tives, such as the pro­vi­sion of com­pa­ny reg­istry on­line ser­vices to fa­cil­i­tate the search­ing for com­pa­nies names, on­line com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion and re­duced name reser­va­tion pe­ri­od from 90 days to 20 days, etc.

Trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion re­form was pre­sent­ed byRan­dall Karim, Di­rec­tor, Strat­e­gy and Pol­i­cy, Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment, who de­tailed the cur­rent sce­nario re­gard­ing im­ped­i­ments to ex­por­ta­tion and im­por­ta­tion.