An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers
@guardian.co.tt

Tra­cy To­bias has been for­mal­ly con­firmed as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ex­im­Bank), as the state-owned in­sti­tu­tion en­ters a new phase of lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of for­mer CEO Navin Dook­er­an last De­cem­ber.

Ex­im­Bank an­nounced To­bias’ con­fir­ma­tion in a so­cial me­dia post on Mon­day night, out­lin­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence across sev­er­al in­dus­tries and her pri­or­i­ties for the bank, which sup­ports lo­cal busi­ness­es in­volved in in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

To­bias brings ex­pe­ri­ence in strate­gic lead­er­ship, cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and risk man­age­ment across the bank­ing, en­er­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tors.

She is a Fel­low of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants and a Char­tered Ac­coun­tant. Her aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions in­clude two Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion de­grees from Ed­in­burgh Busi­ness School and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bed­ford­shire, with the lat­ter spe­cial­is­ing in oil and gas man­age­ment.

As CEO, To­bias is com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing the in­sti­tu­tion’s role in ex­port de­vel­op­ment, ex­pand­ing ac­cess to trade fi­nanc­ing and build­ing in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships. The bank al­so iden­ti­fied sup­port for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion agen­da as a pri­or­i­ty un­der her lead­er­ship.

Her con­fir­ma­tion fol­lows the ter­mi­na­tion of Dook­er­an’s em­ploy­ment with im­me­di­ate ef­fect in De­cem­ber 2025. Dook­er­an had served as Ex­im­Bank’s CEO for six and a half years. No of­fi­cial rea­son was pro­vid­ed for his sud­den de­par­ture at the time.

The lead­er­ship change comes af­ter the ap­point­ment of a new Ex­im­Bank board, which re­ceived its in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment on Sep­tem­ber 25.

The board is chaired by Ed­win Chari­ah, with Suresh Ma­haraj as deputy chair­man. Di­rec­tors are Nan­di­ni Nar­ine, Bhushan Singh and Joseph Ridge Paul.

Ex­im­Bank has iden­ti­fied ex­port de­vel­op­ment, im­proved ac­cess to trade fi­nanc­ing, and stronger in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships among the ar­eas it in­tends to ad­vance un­der her lead­er­ship, link­ing the bank’s work to the wider na­tion­al ob­jec­tive of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my.