Af­ter two years of be­ing away phys­i­cal­ly due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) re­turned to its in-per­son an­nu­al Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Gala Awards and Cock­tail Re­cep­tion.

The event was held on No­vem­ber 24, at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), in Port-of-Spain. The Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Gala Awards 2022 themed “Lead­er­ship and Lega­cy,” high­light­ed the achieve­ments of our busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als who con­tin­ue to take on the chal­lenges of re­cov­er­ing from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and re-build­ing the na­tion’s econ­o­my.

Win­ners in four cat­e­gories were an­nounced on the night. They were Break­through Ex­porter of the Year award­ed to Kam­ri In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed, Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy award­ed to Air LinkCom­mu­ni­ca­tions Lim­it­ed and Green Agen­da award­ed to De­N­o­vo En­er­gy Lim­it­ed.

The fi­nal­ists for the En­tre­pre­neur­ship award were A&J’s Home­made Ice Cream Co Ltd, Siel En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Ltd and Grapes Tech­nol­o­gy Group. The win­ner of the cat­e­go­ry was A&J’s Home­made Ice Cream Co. Ltd.

K.C. Con­fec­tionery Lim­it­ed copped the award for In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Known…T&T Owned Com­pa­ny of the Year.

The T&T Cham­ber al­so in­duct­ed two busi­ness stal­warts in­to the Busi­ness Hall of Fame — Langston Roach and Nicholas Galt. They joined 38 oth­er busi­ness lu­mi­nar­ies who were in­duct­ed in­to the Busi­ness Hall of Fame over the past 17 years the Awards pro­gramme has been run­ning.

T&T Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley said, be­cause of a well-planned, strong busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and their lead­er­ship, T&T was able to nav­i­gate the dif­fi­cult head­winds cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic on the na­tion’s econ­o­my. He praised the busi­ness sec­tor for their re­silience over the past two years and her­ald­ed their suc­cess­es dur­ing times of un­cer­tain­ty.

“We must con­tin­ue to recog­nise our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty pub­licly as the eco­nom­ic wealth cre­at­ed by a suc­cess­ful busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty cre­ates sta­bil­i­ty that is nec­es­sary for a suc­cess­ful coun­try.

“Our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty stepped up to the so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of op­er­at­ing sev­er­al mass vac­ci­na­tion sites, which en­hanced our abil­i­ty to vac­ci­nate the pop­u­la­tion quick­ly, in an ef­fort to save lives and liveli­hoods,” he said.

Pash­ley hoped their ac­tions would in­spire an en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and mo­ti­vate oth­ers to get in­volved in busi­ness, ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in mak­ing our econ­o­my stronger and more com­pet­i­tive in re­gion­al and ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­kets.