Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, is urg­ing the lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to fo­cus on tan­gi­ble, mea­sur­able ac­tions that lead to re­al-world re­sults through its ESG (En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance) pro­grammes.

The Min­is­ter was speak­ing at AM­CHAM T&T’s ESG Con­fer­ence 2025 at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

He said, “ESG is not mere­ly a phil­an­thropic or eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion but a strate­gic im­per­a­tive. The Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy aligns close­ly with the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), plac­ing the en­vi­ron­ment at the core of so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”

He con­tin­ued, “More­over, the con­cept of ESG must not be seen just as a cost but as an in­vest­ment that can be utilised strate­gi­cal­ly to the ad­van­tage of Trinidad and To­ba­go and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. We must ac­knowl­edge that re­spon­si­ble in­vest­ment at­tracts high-qual­i­ty for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI), which in turn helps lo­cal busi­ness­es ac­cess new and lu­cra­tive mar­kets.”

The Min­is­ter al­so not­ed the con­fer­ence’s theme “Dri­ving Sus­tain­able Growth: Em­pow­er­ing Ac­tion through ESG” aligned with goals shared by the Gov­ern­ment as he al­so pushed for fur­ther sup­port of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PSOTT).

He said, “PSOTT will al­low us to shape pol­i­cy to­geth­er, im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness, at­tract in­vest­ment, and dri­ve ex­port growth, us­ing ESG prin­ci­ples. It strength­ens our ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond to crises, po­si­tions Trinidad and To­ba­go as a cred­i­ble and com­pet­i­tive des­ti­na­tion, and en­sures that in­clu­sive growth ben­e­fits busi­ness­es of every size.”

AM­CHAM Pres­i­dent An­na Hen­der­son stressed that there should be more em­pha­sis on ac­ti­vat­ing the “S” in ESG—So­cial.

She said, “At its core, the “S” in ESG is about peo­ple—how we treat our em­ploy­ees, how we en­gage with our com­mu­ni­ties, and how our ac­tions ei­ther build eq­ui­ty or en­trench in­equal­i­ty. It asks us: Are we cre­at­ing work­places that are safe, in­clu­sive, and sup­port­ive? Or are we al­low­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, ex­clu­sion, and ne­glect to erode the very foun­da­tions of our progress?”

She said that by ac­knowl­edg­ing and em­brac­ing dif­fer­ences, the path­way for cru­cial ef­fi­cien­cies in the work­place could be found, but stressed this re­quired back­ing from the lead­er­ship.

Hen­der­son said, “This trans­for­ma­tion must be­gin at the top. Lead­er­ship teams and boards should not be shaped by quo­tas alone, but by a de­lib­er­ate com­mit­ment to as­sem­bling the right mix of skills, per­spec­tives, and lived ex­pe­ri­ences. True di­ver­si­ty is not just about rep­re­sen­ta­tion—it’s about eq­ui­ty in op­por­tu­ni­ty and ex­cel­lence in ex­e­cu­tion. It means cul­ti­vat­ing en­vi­ron­ments where every in­di­vid­ual is gen­uine­ly con­sid­ered, and where teams are built to chal­lenge con­ven­tion, dri­ve in­no­va­tion, and el­e­vate gov­er­nance. In this way, lead­er­ship evolves in­to a force that re­flects not on­ly who we are, but what we as­pire to be­come: com­pe­tent, in­clu­sive, and vi­sion­ary.”