Por­tia Simp­son-Miller will de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of T&T (ICATT) con­fer­ence next month.

The an­nu­al event comes off at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on Oc­to­ber 5-6.

Simp­son-Miller served as Ja­maica's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter from 2006-2007 and 2012-2016. She is that coun­try's cur­rent Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed CEO of Over­stock.com, Patrick Byrne, shares cen­tre-stage at the event. Byrne is an en­tre­pre­neur, e-com­merce pi­o­neer and CEO, of Over­stock.com, which Forbes mag­a­zine named the No 9 Best Com­pa­ny to Work for in the Unit­ed States in 2010. He will de­liv­er an ad­dress ti­tled The Cryp­to-rev­o­lu­tion Meets Cen­tral Bank­ing and Be­yond.

Byrne is re­spon­si­ble for the im­pres­sive for­tunes of Over­stock.com, which in 2014, be­came the first on­line re­tail­er to ac­cept bit­coin.

By 2013, the com­pa­ny had rev­enues of US$1.3 bil­lion and a net in­come of US$88.5 mil­lion. He is well known for his cam­paign against il­le­gal naked short sell­ing, af­firm­ing that the prac­tice has been used in vi­o­la­tion of se­cu­ri­ties law to hurt the price of his and oth­er pub­lic com­pa­nies' stock. Del­e­gates at the con­fer­ence can look for­ward to hear­ing Simp­son-Miller's sto­ry of what has been de­scribed as de­ter­mi­na­tion and re­silience in the face of a tough in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment cou­pled with do­mes­tic chal­lenges and her views as to the key in­gre­di­ents for con­sid­er­a­tion to achieve eco­nom­ic turn­around in the present cir­cum­stances af­fect­ing our twin is­land re­pub­lic.

The con­fer­ence will be among the first fo­ra for dis­cus­sion of the 2017 fis­cal pack­age for T&T to be pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 30. For­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Wen­dell Mot­t­ley will mod­er­ate a pan­el dis­cus­sion on Oc­to­ber 5 en­ti­tled A 2017 Trinidad and To­ba­go Bud­get Ex­plo­ration–A Bal­anc­ing Act.

The pan­el fea­tures Charles Per­cy, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and CEO of Methanex Trinidad Lim­it­ed; Karen Dar­basie, Group CEO at First Cit­i­zens; and Pe­ter George, En­tre­pre­neur.

RBC Roy­al Bank is lead­ing as a Ti­ta­ni­um Spon­sor and Rob John­ston, Head, Caribbean Bank­ing RBC, will speak on Man­ag­ing Prof­itabil­i­ty and Liq­uid­i­ty in a Chang­ing Eco­nom­ic En­vi­ron­ment.

Spon­sors are sup­port­ing the 2016 con­fer­ence: Gold Lev­el Spon­sors are De­loitte, EOG Re­sources, EY, Grant Thorn­ton, KP­MG, PKF, PwC and Zcloud So­lu­tions; Sil­ver Lev­el Spon­sors are CPA Cana­da, Guardian Group and SBCS while Bronze Spon­sors are AC­CA, AEGIS, At­lantic, BDO and Massy.