GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

In a de­vel­op­ment sig­nalling a new era of na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (PSOTT) was of­fi­cial­ly launched yes­ter­day, ce­ment­ing its role as a strate­gic and ful­ly in­te­grat­ed part­ner to the Gov­ern­ment in dri­ving eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.

The new or­gan­i­sa­tion, de­signed to be the sin­gle, co­he­sive voice of the na­tion’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, is al­ready deeply in­te­grat­ed in­to the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism’s (MTIT) am­bi­tious eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion and de­vel­op­ment plan.

This con­fir­ma­tion came from Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj at the launch event, held be­fore a packed au­di­ence of busi­ness lead­ers at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Ma­haraj con­firmed the gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to the part­ner­ship, as­sur­ing that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is “act­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly and ag­gres­sive­ly, with mea­sur­able re­sults.”

He laid out the ten key ob­jec­tives of the na­tion­al plan, em­pha­sis­ing that PSOTT’s co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach is not just wel­come, but es­sen­tial to achiev­ing these na­tion-build­ing goals.

Ma­haraj said that PSOTT is al­ready work­ing along­side the min­istry on each of these ob­jec­tives aligned with sus­tained sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments for growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion which in­volves con­crete ac­tion to at­tract cap­i­tal and pre­pare the pri­vate sec­tor to ef­fec­tive­ly seize new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Stat­ing that the gov­ern­ment “in­her­it­ed a se­ri­ous for­eign ex­change chal­lenge in this coun­try” Ma­haraj as­sured, “We are not run­ning from it, we are con­fronting it head-on with a tar­get of ex­port rev­enue growth of US$2 bil­lion in two years and US$5 bil­lion over five years.”

This ex­port dri­ve is di­rect­ly linked to mas­sive in­vest­ment tar­gets, with the gov­ern­ment aim­ing for new in­vest­ments val­ued at US$3 bil­lion with­in two years and a stag­ger­ing US$9 bil­lion with­in five years.

One of the key in­vest­ments the min­istry is cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing is by the TT Iron Steel com­pa­ny, which to­geth­er with cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ers of iron and steel prod­ucts, aims to sig­nif­i­cant­ly ramp up do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion and non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

The min­is­ter out­lined this is en­vis­aged to gen­er­ate much as US$2 bil­lion in ex­ports over a sev­en-year pe­ri­od and pro­vide in­puts to lo­cal firms val­ued at over US$200 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

This im­port sub­sti­tu­tion would con­serve valu­able for­eign ex­change and pro­vide syn­er­gis­tic op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween pro­duc­ers, sup­pli­ers and dis­trib­u­tors in the iron and steel in­dus­try.

When ful­ly op­er­a­tional, TTIS would em­ploy as many as 1,500 work­ers, em­ploy­ing both gen­er­al labour­ers and spe­cial­ists such as steel mill op­er­a­tors, welders, ma­chin­ists fab­ri­ca­tors and en­gi­neers.

Ma­haraj added the in­di­rect im­pact ex­tends fur­ther and would have a re­al and sig­nif­i­cant im­pact to those in the scrap met­al, con­struc­tion, lo­gis­tics and trans­porta­tion sec­tors

PSOTT’s chair Richard Lewis, who al­so spoke at the launch, said the en­ti­ty would mo­bilise mem­bers to pro­vide in­no­va­tion, ad­vance dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and achieve full ex­port readi­ness, stress­ing that the ex­port of goods and ser­vices is the on­ly way to solve the for­eign ex­change prob­lem that ex­ists in T&T to­day.

“Just like oil and gas, we must get more to spend more. In the long term, it must be con­sid­ered the lifeblood of the econ­o­my and treat­ed as crit­i­cal, just like blood is for life. Imag­ine our man­u­fac­tur­ers, our ser­vice providers, our cre­ative in­dus­tries, all com­pet­ing and win­ning on the glob­al stage,” he said.

Busi­ness­woman and for­mer chair of the To­ba­go branch of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Di­ane Hadad, has wel­comed a new ini­tia­tive aimed at fos­ter­ing greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in the pri­vate sec­tor.

She de­scribed the move as a long-over­due step to­ward uni­ty and heal­ing in the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic land­scape.

She how­ev­er, crit­i­cised the frag­ment­ed na­ture of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, where de­ci­sions of­ten ben­e­fit se­lect groups rather than the wider econ­o­my.

Ac­cord­ing to Hadad, this di­vi­sion has weak­ened the sec­tor’s abil­i­ty to ad­vo­cate ef­fec­tive­ly and has con­tributed to sys­temic chal­lenges.

Mean­while, Frances Bain-Cum­ber­batch, chief le­gal and ex­ter­nal af­fairs of­fi­cer at ANSA McAL, said the part­ner­ship be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor is long over­due, ar­gu­ing that when busi­ness thrives, the na­tion thrives.

Son­ji Pierre-Chase, pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce al­so un­der­scored the pow­er of col­lec­tive ac­tion with­in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“We al­ways say we have uni­ty in num­bers and this is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for all pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions, all busi­ness mem­bers to come to­geth­er and work in terms of solv­ing the is­sues that af­fect our coun­try. And when we come in this uni­fied form, we be­lieve that we will have greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with the gov­ern­ment. I mean, the min­is­ter’s right, you can’t have sev­er­al peo­ple speak­ing with dif­fer­ent voic­es,” she added.