The Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj met with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) on Thurs­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Min­istry, this was the lat­est meet­ing the new min­is­ter held over the course of this week.

The TTCIC’s del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed its pres­i­dent, Son­ji Pierre-Chase; se­nior vice pres­i­dent, Karen Yip Chuck; vice pres­i­dent, Dr. Chris­t­ian Stone and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Vashti Guyadeen met with the min­is­ter as well as Dr. Col­in Neil Go­sine, par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry and Ran­dall Karim, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Ag.).

Pierre-Chase not­ed the min­istry’s vi­tal role in ad­vanc­ing the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, and ex­pressed the Cham­ber’s com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry through ini­tia­tives aimed at sup­port­ing Small and Medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and ad­vanc­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Ear­li­er this week, the min­is­ter and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary al­so held meet­ings with the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T), the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTI­TOA), the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers, and the Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce. Dis­cus­sions fo­cused on trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, dig­i­tal com­pet­i­tive­ness, tourism de­vel­op­ment, and en­hanc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vis­i­bil­i­ty in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

The Min­istry's re­lease ex­plained in these dis­cus­sions, min­is­ter Ma­haraj reaf­firmed the min­istry’s com­mit­ment to reg­u­lar and struc­tured con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers across all sec­tors. He un­der­scored the point that in­clu­sive eco­nom­ic growth de­pend­ed on strong part­ner­ships and re­spon­sive pol­i­cy­mak­ing.

Ma­haraj stressed fo­cus on build­ing an ag­ile, in­vestor-friend­ly ecosys­tem and wel­comed re­al-time feed­back from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.