Aleem Khan

Lead­ing busi­ness peo­ple yes­ter­day ex­pressed hope and con­fi­dence in the new Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, Lar­ry Howai, but said he need­ed help in a min­istry that had its work­load in­creased with the ad­di­tion of "econ­o­my" to the port­fo­lio. Cather­ine Ku­mar, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, said: "It's a bit strange be­cause I would say that min­istry and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are the two min­istries that we should have a min­is­ter in the min­istry. For quite some time now, Fi­nance has al­ways had a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance." It is a big re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, hav­ing added on the econ­o­my to one min­is­ter's brief, adding, "it is go­ing to be a lot for him to car­ry," she said. Ku­mar said while there are ex­pe­ri­enced per­ma­nent sec­re­taries at the Fi­nance Min­istry on whom Howai would have to re­ly a great deal, at the same time, "hav­ing an­oth­er min­is­ter there as a col­league work­ing with you cer­tain­ly helps."

Speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a sem­i­nar host­ed by the T&T Stock Ex­change and Ernst & Young at the cham­ber's head of­fice in West­moor­ings, she said, "We know Lar­ry Howai very well. For me, com­ing from the bank­ing sec­tor, I would have worked with him in the past, and even as a cham­ber, we would have done a lot with First Cit­i­zens. Lar­ry has the re­quired skill set for a min­istry like that. He is knowl­edge­able in the area of fi­nance, very dis­ci­plined. I think he un­der­stands the need for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. I think he would be able to bring some bal­ance."

Ku­mar said she was con­fi­dent he would know "where he has to spend, not hold back but, at the same time, not be ir­re­spon­si­ble in his ex­pen­di­ture." Wain Iton, gen­er­al man­ag­er and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Stock Ex­change, said he does not ex­pect the lo­cal stock mar­ket to re­act to the change in the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. Asked about his own re­ac­tion to Howai's ap­point­ment, Iton said: "I think it should be good. I have a lot of re­spect for the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter and I'm very hope­ful about our new fi­nance min­is­ter. He brings a lot of good cre­den­tials to the ta­ble," Iton said yes­ter­day. "I'm very hope­ful that we get all the sup­port from the new min­is­ter as we had from the for­mer min­is­ter." Af­ter her pre­sen­ta­tion, Maria Daniel, a part­ner at Ernst & Young, told the Guardian, "We have to wait and see, but Mr Howai is sea­soned banker, very much in touch with cor­po­rate needs."