Even as economic depression continues to affect the Caribbean, T&T is playing a leadership role in the region, Planning Minister Bhoe Tewarie told officials of the Inter-American Development Bank on Thursday evening.
"T&T is perceived as having a leadership role in the Caribbean region, not only economic but also in a political capacity and in terms of the evolving role that T&T plays in relation to the dynamic of change and the geo-politics of the world today," he said at a meeting between IDB representatives and local business leaders at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain."The economies of the Caribbean are challenged because of debt, the difficulty of gross domestic product (GDP) growth and diversification."
A release from the Ministry of Planning stated that the limited support of IDB's four private sector arms to Caribbean private sector institutions has been a long-standing concern for Caribbean member countries."This was the focus of discussion at the Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Bank held in Panama in March of this year. At that meeting, T&T expressed strong support for rethinking the role of these private sector arms and for achieving greater strategic realignment."
The release said there is a major initiative underway in the IDB with the potential to shape future collaborations between the agency and the private sector in Latin American and Caribbean economies.Tewarie told the local business leaders the meeting with IDB staff was an opportunity to shape how foreigners perceive T&T as the business leader in the Caribbean.
"This is an opportunity to help shape T&T's economic prospects in the wider region and how it is perceived. This is an opportunity not only to engage and inform but also to shape perception," the minister said.Catherine Kumar, CEO, T&T Chamber of Commerce, said she wanted the IDB to work with the Chamber on SME projects.
"The Chamber is familiar with the IDB and has done a lot of work with them. The Chamber has taken on a number of key initiatives for 2013 and 2014 and one of them includes the development of the SME sector. We believe if we develop an SME sector it will provide a stable economy in T&T and move away the reliance from on large companies which is what happens now. We have done a lot of work with the SME sector," Kumar said.She told the IDB representatives the Chamber is also working on a corporate governance project.
"We are doing a project with the T&T Stock Exchange and T&T Corporate Governance Institute. We want to have the corporate governance code amended a bit. The Chamber is also involved in a crime watch initiative and home for battered women projects."We have not thought about coming to the IDB for projects like that but we have not looked at all the opportunities available from the IDB," she said.
The meeting was one of several held during an IDB high level private sector mission to T&T which ended yesterday. The mission came after concerns were raised about the limited support of the IDB's four private sector arms to Caribbean private sector institutions.As a result, IDB officials are looking at ways to shape future collaborations between the agency and the private sector in the region.