An­na Hen­der­son has been named as the new pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T).

Hen­der­son, who is the CEO of Ama­ranth Busi­ness So­lu­tions Ltd, was of­fi­cial­ly in­stalled as the 18th pres­i­dent of Am­cham T&T at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 32nd an­nu­al meet­ing and busi­ness fo­rum, held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day.

Hen­der­son, who is Am­cham T&T’s third fe­male pres­i­dent in the last eight years, re­placed Stu­art Fran­co who served as the pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion from 2023.

In her in­au­gur­al ad­dress as pres­i­dent, Hen­der­son raised for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, crime and im­proved re­la­tion­ships with Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion as some of her key points of fo­cus

She said, “Trade and in­vest­ment re­main our fore­most fo­cus. To com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly on the glob­al stage, we must re-build the con­fi­dence that re­sults in more lo­cal re-in­vest­ment and at­tract FDI in both the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors. This means rad­i­cal­ly im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness. Our mem­bers con­tin­ue to face bur­den­some ap­proval process­es and out­dat­ed sys­tems that hin­der growth. For ex­am­ple: Chang­ing the im­mi­gra­tion form to a dig­i­tal process will ease en­try at the air­port, im­prove im­mi­gra­tion while wel­com­ing all trav­ellers.”

She called on the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to ad­dress in­ef­fi­cien­cies with­in the Cus­toms as it would be cru­cial to the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

She said,”We be­lieve that should the Gov­ern­ment be­gin en­gag­ing the US Gov­ern­ment to share more in­for­ma­tion on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters and start the process to make the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port a pre-clear­ance port - if this is achieved - we can boost our tourism and trans­porta­tion sec­tors with mas­sive con­cur­rent boost to the wider econ­o­my. More im­me­di­ate­ly, and all of my re­cent pre­de­ces­sors have spo­ken about this, is the need for Cus­toms re­form. Stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures, a true recog­ni­tion that Cus­toms has three ob­jec­tives – bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, rev­enue col­lec­tion and trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion is im­per­a­tive. Some­one has to bell the cat.”

She con­tin­ued, “For too long, politi­cians have been un­will­ing to find the path­way to col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cus­toms lead­er­ship and the busi­ness sec­tor to bring mean­ing­ful, sen­si­ble and last­ing changes. Stream­lin­ing Cus­toms pro­ce­dures, pro­vid­ing pre­dictabil­i­ty, mod­ernising op­er­a­tions, pro­vid­ing re­al time da­ta, and in­creas­ing trans­paren­cy are crit­i­cal steps to re­duce de­lays, low­er costs and strength­en T&T’s glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Let’s nev­er lose sight of this. But im­prov­ing trade is on­ly part of the equa­tion.”

The new Am­cham pres­i­dent al­so felt there was need to re­view the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as she point­ed to the in­crease in school vi­o­lence.

She said, “We should re­alise that we are at an in­ter­sec­tion with the lack of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty, an out­dat­ed and there­fore un-in­ter­est­ing cur­ricu­lum, and an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that is too rigid and not suit­ed for the world we live in to­day, far less the one we face in five years. This means we have to do more around prac­ti­cal skills train­ing for youth, up­skilling for work­ers, and in­cen­tives for busi­ness­es to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties. In­stead of lament­ing “brain drain,” let’s build an ecosys­tem that re­tains and at­tracts tal­ent for to­day’s busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.”

She said crime al­so re­quired at­ten­tion as it is left unchecked it would con­tin­ue to ad­verse­ly af­fect T&T’s in­dus­tries. (PC)