Two of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s lead­ing busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions have wel­comed the ap­point­ment of the new Cab­i­net, while call­ing for ur­gent col­lab­o­ra­tion on crit­i­cal ar­eas of eco­nom­ic re­form and en­er­gy pol­i­cy.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce con­grat­u­lat­ed all new­ly ap­point­ed Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, Sen­a­tors and Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters, say­ing it looked for­ward to “mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment with the gov­ern­ment on crit­i­cal pol­i­cy ar­eas”.

“As the voice of busi­ness, the cham­ber re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to dri­ve na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, en­hance eco­nom­ic re­silience, and un­lock new rev­enue streams for the coun­try,” the or­gan­i­sa­tion said in a state­ment.

Among the ar­eas flagged for ur­gent at­ten­tion were trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, the ease of do­ing busi­ness, SME de­vel­op­ment, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. The Cham­ber said its aim re­mained the cre­ation of “a pros­per­ous and thriv­ing busi­ness sec­tor pow­ered by in­no­va­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and com­pet­i­tive­ness”. The En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so of­fered its con­grat­u­la­tions to Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, and Ernesto Ke­sar, named Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy.

“We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing close­ly with the in­com­ing min­is­ters on be­half of our 400 mem­ber com­pa­nies, as we seek to build a re­silient en­er­gy sec­tor that de­liv­ers val­ue for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the cham­ber said.

How­ev­er, it did not hold back in out­lin­ing the ur­gent pri­or­i­ties the new min­is­ters must ad­dress. “There are many ar­eas with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor where ur­gent pol­i­cy ac­tion is re­quired,” the cham­ber said, high­light­ing the need to ac­cel­er­ate the pace of new gas field de­vel­op­ment.

“With­out in­vest­ment in new gas de­vel­op­ments, the fu­ture of Trinidad’s en­er­gy sec­tor is un­cer­tain,” the cham­ber warned, “with se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for gov­ern­ment rev­enue, for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for small and medi­um ser­vice providers, and em­ploy­ment.”