Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Eco­nom­ic progress can­not be achieved with­out the ac­tive part­ner­ship of the pri­vate sec­tor, said Ava Ma­habir-Dass, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism. She was ad­dress­ing the Cou­va Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) dur­ing the Cham­ber’s an­nu­al Christ­mas func­tion on Fri­day at its ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex in Cou­va.

Ma­habir-Dass said the Min­istry has set bold yet achiev­able na­tion­al tar­gets, in­clud­ing:

Ex­port rev­enue growth of US$2 bil­lion with­in two years, and US$5 bil­lion over five years.

New in­vest­ments to­talling US$3 bil­lion in the next two years, and US$9 bil­lion over five years.

The cre­ation of thou­sands of new jobs to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens and sup­port com­mu­ni­ty pros­per­i­ty.

She said the Min­istry is ac­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to make do­ing busi­ness eas­i­er. “Among them is the mod­erni­sa­tion of per­mits and li­cens­ing through a uni­fied on­line gov­ern­ment plat­form — de­signed to re­duce red tape and elim­i­nate cost­ly de­lays. We are al­so trans­form­ing pay­ment sys­tems, in­clud­ing elec­tron­ic plat­forms at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains com­pet­i­tive in the glob­al mar­ket­place. At the Min­istry, we are ex­pand­ing the SEW/TTBi­zlink plat­form, iden­ti­fy­ing bot­tle­necks and re­duc­ing the lead time for ap­provals and feed­back.”

Ma­habir-Dass added that in the com­ing weeks, three ma­jor ini­tia­tives will be launched:

On De­cem­ber 2, a new cruise line will be wel­comed to Trinidad as part of the 2025/2026 Cruise Ship Sea­son.

On De­cem­ber 10, the for­mal un­veil­ing of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PSOTT), aimed at deep­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness.

In ear­ly Jan­u­ary, the pa­tri­ot­ic Buy Lo­cal, Build Trin­ba­go na­tion­al cam­paign, in­tend­ed to con­serve for­eign ex­change, re­duce im­ports, and strength­en do­mes­tic sup­ply chains.

She not­ed that the re­moval of the 15% tar­iff on agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts such as Urea Am­mo­ni­um Ni­trate (UAN) ex­port­ed to the Unit­ed States will al­low ex­porters to re­sume sales, eas­ing sup­ply con­straints and safe­guard­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports.

Ma­habir-Dass al­so said the Gov­ern­ment is aware of the sub­stan­tial num­ber of unutilised, un­der­utilised, or idle State as­sets that con­tin­ue to drain re­sources. These as­sets, she said, rep­re­sent both a fis­cal bur­den and a missed eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty, as many can be re­pur­posed with min­i­mal in­vest­ment.

She added that the Min­istry is cur­rent­ly de­vel­op­ing a Na­tion­al Reg­istry of all such as­sets, with the in­ten­tion of mon­etis­ing them through ap­pro­pri­ate re­ju­ve­na­tion mod­els.