PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, does not be­lieve the State of Emer­gency (SoE) has dis­rupt­ed busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In an in­ter­view fol­low­ing an event to launch the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s 2026 Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards, the Min­is­ter was asked about the pos­si­ble im­pact on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of the SoE ex­ten­sions.

“I re­al­ly do not see a neg­a­tive in it. That’s from my per­spec­tive. I think the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty un­der­stands that an in­hibitor to in­vest­ment, lo­cal and for­eign, and for growth is the crime sit­u­a­tion and ap­pre­ci­ate any ef­fort that has been tak­en to al­le­vi­ate the crime sit­u­a­tion and bring it down to man­age­able lev­els,” said the min­is­ter in re­sponse to re­porters at the event.

A third SoE since De­cem­ber 2024 was im­ple­ment­ed for three months by the Par­lia­ment on June 11, 2026. The emer­gency mea­sure is sched­uled to re­main in ef­fect un­til Sep­tem­ber 2026.

Ear­li­er, dur­ing his speech at the event, Ma­haraj stressed the im­por­tance of the pri­vate sec­tor to the econ­o­my, but clar­i­fied that the gov­ern­ment does not in­tend to in­ter­fere with the pri­vate sec­tor’s op­er­a­tions.

He told re­porters, “We are fo­cussed on the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas. The gov­ern­ment does not get in­volved, and does not want to get in­volved, in pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness. That’s the pri­vate sec­tor. Our role is to fa­cil­i­tate the pri­vate sec­tor and we are fo­cussed on that. Every day, that’s all we do. Fo­cus on cre­at­ing the en­vi­ron­ment for the pri­vate sec­tor to flour­ish, in­clud­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.”

He con­tin­ued, “We want to dou­ble the pri­vate sec­tor’s non-en­er­gy con­tri­bu­tion to GDP by 2030.”

Karen Yip Chuck, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, al­so said that busi­ness re­mains a “crit­i­cal dri­ver of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, re­silience and eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion”

She hoped that the awards would con­tin­ue to en­cour­age the pur­suit of world-class per­for­mance and show­case the best of T&T in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“In to­day’s busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, suc­cess must be built on a foun­da­tion of hon­esty, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and eth­i­cal lead­er­ship. Skills and tal­ent are im­por­tant, but char­ac­ter re­mains the defin­ing qual­i­ty of en­dur­ing suc­cess,” she said.

“It rep­re­sents a com­mit­ment to life­long learn­ing. Ex­cel­lence re­quires adapt­abil­i­ty, cu­rios­i­ty, and the will­ing­ness to evolve. Learn­ing ex­tends be­yond for­mal ed­u­ca­tion and en­com­pass­es per­son­al growth, in­no­va­tion, trans­for­ma­tion, and the abil­i­ty to re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to chang­ing cir­cum­stances.”

The Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards Fi­nale will take place on No­vem­ber 4, 2026.