Dax Driver, CEO of the Energy Chamber of T&T, has suggested that T&T set up embassies in countries where they can actually sell products.He was commenting on the official visit to China by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and a trade delegation. One of the highlights of that trip will be the opening of this country's first embassy in China."Do we really need that?" Driver asked. "We need embassies in places like Africa where we can sell our products. T&T is a small market where China can sell in but we do not have markets there to sell to as they are a big country."Driver was speaking during the Joint Dialogue on T&T Private Sector Assessment Report (TT-PSAR) hosted by the Planning Ministry at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain.He was making a contribution from the floor during the question and answer segment of the programme when he made the point that T&T needed to find new markets.
Planning Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie said based on the PSAR study there was a group of local companies that had developed the capacity to provide high value added goods and services.He said local companies had capabilities to compete internationally and used the example of the SMAKS Luxury Group of Companies, whose owner Kiran Akal, recently launched a local rum which had already broken into markets in Europe and North America."Akal has made international alliances to take the Chai Rum to the Cannes Film Festival where it will be sipped on, to the Miami Boat Show, to an alliance with a champagne company in which there will be a collaboration and with other niche companies in the Mercedes Benz Group. This came out of T&T by a Trinidad citizen," Tewarie said.
He also said the Government was creating the environment for the private sector to grow without state intervention.
"There will be no socialist intervention in the economy. The ultimate goal of capitalism is not unbridled runaway horses but in fact a society that is wealthy but in which justice prevails. T&T already has one of the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the western hemisphere but we need to do more and T&T should have one of the highest in the world," he said.
He added that the private sector might also do its part to grow the economy instead of just relying on the state.
"The private sector said there was not much opportunity for business but as long as the private sector does not invest there will always be this situation as this is a small economy," he said.