Stu­art Fran­co, CEO at Trinidad Sys­tems Ltd (The TSL Group), was yes­ter­day ap­point­ed as the new pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) re­plac­ing out­go­ing pres­i­dent, Car­o­line Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine who served a two-year term from 2021-2023.

“I would like to ex­press my deep­est ap­pre­ci­a­tion to all the mem­bers of this cham­ber who have placed their trust in me,” Fran­co told Am­cham T&T’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 mem­ber com­pa­nies in his in­au­gur­al ad­dress at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 30th an­nu­al meet­ing yes­ter­day.

“Your con­fi­dence in my abil­i­ty is not tak­en light­ly, and I am com­mit­ted to lead­ing this cham­ber with in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy, and a re­lent­less dri­ve for progress which has been em­bed­ded in me dur­ing my 20 years at Trinidad Sys­tems Ltd.”

Fran­co is the 17th pres­i­dent in the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 31-year his­to­ry.

He said his plans in­clude build­ing bridges and find­ing so­lu­tions to sup­port busi­ness growth that will un­leash the full, dy­nam­ic po­ten­tial of the coun­try.

“I make no apolo­gies for say­ing that busi­ness has a huge role to play in re­al­is­ing that dy­namism,” Fran­co said.

“We must find more ef­fec­tive mech­a­nisms for Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships. We must take a clos­er look at the ar­eas where busi­ness can sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s ob­jec­tives and the de­sires of our peo­ple for bet­ter ser­vice de­liv­ery of pub­lic goods to see where col­lab­o­ra­tion can lead to im­proved re­sults.”

In this re­gard, the new­ly ap­point­ed pres­i­dent spoke on the is­sues of crime, cus­toms re­form, and de­vel­op­ing the tech sec­tor where he be­lieves in­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion can yield sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess.

“As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we are re­it­er­at­ing the need for clear, tar­get­ed, co-or­di­nat­ed, and col­lab­o­ra­tive ac­tions to ur­gent­ly ad­dress and re­duce crime,” Fran­co said. “I be­lieve we can all agree that crime is bad­ly af­fect­ing con­fi­dence in our econ­o­my and dis­cour­ag­ing a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of po­ten­tial in­vest­ment.”

“As we seek to en­hance the cul­ture of col­lab­o­ra­tion, we do not want to put out a list of things that we be­lieve need to be done. In­stead, we would like to work with the Gov­ern­ment and the TTPS to de­vel­op a mech­a­nism of con­tin­u­ous en­gage­ment to sup­port the very clear and spe­cif­ic goal of re­duc­ing crime and then work on all the in­puts and mea­sures – the im­me­di­ate ac­tions and the longer-term so­lu­tions – that will al­low us to achieve this com­mon ob­jec­tive.”

Fran­co is the sec­ond se­nior ex­ec­u­tive from the TSL Group to be ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of Am­cham T&T, fol­low­ing Nicholas Galt, (chair­man of the Board at TSL) who served in the po­si­tion from 2004 to 2006 and was lat­er ap­point­ed as chair­man of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cham­bers of Com­merce of Latin Amer­i­ca in 2013.