Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj’s eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion plans in­clude launch­ing the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T, fa­cil­i­tat­ing busi­ness uni­ty and al­low­ing all busi­ness groups to speak with one voice. He’s al­so ex­plor­ing a tourism mas­ter plan based on Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ma­haraj spoke about the plans dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the bill to sup­ple­ment the 2025 Bud­get by $3.14 bil­lion.

Ma­haraj said the min­istry’s over­ar­ch­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas.

“Our fo­cus is on gen­er­at­ing na­tion­al rev­enue, earn­ing and pre­serv­ing for­eign ex­change, and at­tract­ing both lo­cal and for­eign in­vest­ment. And most im­por­tant­ly, set­ting the clear tone that T&T is open for busi­ness...a na­tion ready to com­pete, in­no­vate, and to lead,” he said.

“This is more than a min­is­te­r­i­al man­date. It’s a na­tion­al im­per­a­tive. And I in­tend to pur­sue it with dis­ci­pline, bold­ness, and a spir­it of gen­uine part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor,” Ma­haraj added.

“We’ve as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a min­istry, and in­deed an econ­o­my, that has lacked a co­her­ent vi­sion, a fo­cused strat­e­gy, and ex­e­cutable plans to ful­fil the crit­i­cal role of trade, in­vest­ment, and tourism in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. There was no lead­er­ship, no di­rec­tion, ze­ro ev­i­dence that any­thing what­so­ev­er was be­ing done to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.”

Ma­haraj said his min­istry faces “a busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that is frus­trat­ed and fa­tigued.”

“They en­counter bar­ri­ers in­stead of bridges. Rather than fos­ter­ing an ease of do­ing busi­ness, the en­vi­ron­ment has be­come one of dif­fi­cul­ty, de­lay, and dis­trust. In­vestors—both for­eign and do­mes­tic—have been qui­et­ly walk­ing away,” he said.

“Even more con­cern­ing is the frag­men­ta­tion of our pri­vate sec­tor. Siloed, splin­tered, and lack­ing uni­fied rep­re­sen­ta­tion, their col­lec­tive po­ten­tial has been di­min­ished. And nei­ther the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion nor parts of the pri­vate sec­tor ful­ly recog­nised the eco­nom­ic cost of this di­vi­sion.”

Ma­haraj, cit­ing his long, il­lus­tri­ous busi­ness ca­reer, said busi­ness­peo­ple knew him and they’re all now set­ting up meet­ings with him.

He said he al­ways ad­mired the IRO, which rep­re­sents re­li­gious uni­ty.

“So, I’m spear­head­ing a strat­e­gy to bring in all these or­gan­i­sa­tions and I in­tend to call it the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T, where they all come in for busi­ness uni­ty so they can ap­proach the min­istry with one voice. That’s go­ing to be the most trans­for­ma­tion­al de­vel­op­ment in T&T’s his­to­ry of busi­ness,” he said.

“We al­so have clear plans for trade, ex­port, forex earn­ings and sav­ings and ex­pan­sion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor- that’s where I came from. We have hun­dreds of bil­lions in strand­ed as­sets that could be re­pur­posed.”

Say­ing tourism was an­oth­er im­por­tant pil­lar, Ma­haraj said, “The next biggest thing we have in this coun­try is Trinidad Car­ni­val. I’ve met with a mul­ti-na­tion­al agency, be­cause with Car­ni­val, all the ho­tels book up til next year al­ready, and flights start to book up al­ready.

“If we can cre­ate that same en­vi­ron­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ty all year round, oil and gas go be sec­ondary to this econ­o­my. I can­not re­veal it as yet; it’s still in the for­ma­tive stages. But we have a project that’s go­ing to be as trans­for­ma­tion­al as the de­vel­op­ment of the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate when I in­tro­duced that - we’re go­ing to trans­form this econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas to tourism, in­vest­ment and trade.”

Ma­haraj said, “We al­so want to do a cul­tur­al re­set. We’re trans­form­ing the in­ter­nal mind­set with­in the min­istry and across the wider pub­lic sec­tor. We have a tar­get for the two and three years. Al­so, a long-term trans­for­ma­tion plan’s un­der­way.”