Wash­ing­ton DC–Busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers from the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca have been told of plans to sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost T&T's rank­ing in the World Bank's Do­ing Busi­ness Re­port. At present T&T is ranked 66th out of 189 coun­tries but Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the tar­get is to get the coun­try in­to the top ten.

The min­is­ter an­nounced that bold tar­get when he de­liv­ered the clos­ing keynote ad­dress at the 37th An­nu­al Con­fer­ence on the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca on Fri­day in Wash­ing­ton, DC.Bharath said the num­ber of days it takes to set up a busi­ness in T&T has moved from 43 days to three days due to new leg­is­la­tion and Cab­i­net has ap­proved a six-mem­ber Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee to work on en­sur­ing that more is done to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

The min­is­ter said in­vesTT, the coun­try's in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion agency, is a one-stop-shop for any­one in­ter­est­ed in do­ing busi­ness in T&T and he in­vit­ed par­tic­i­pants to vis­it the agency's web­site for a taste of the many in­cen­tives and op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able.He al­so said the min­istry's new mot­to, From Red Tape to the Red Car­pet, un­der­scores the com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to do busi­ness.

The min­is­ter told del­e­gates at the con­fer­ence that T&T was "the gate­way to the Amer­i­c­as" due pri­mar­i­ly to its strate­gic lo­ca­tion be­low the hur­ri­cane belt, its skilled work­force, low un­em­ploy­ment rate and low en­er­gy costs. He said the coun­try's strong telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem, com­pet­i­tive cost struc­ture and high per capi­ta in­come com­bine to make it an ide­al lo­ca­tion for in­vestors and busi­nessper­sons.

Bharath al­so spoke about T&T's "open, free mar­ket econ­o­my and a long his­to­ry of be­ing com­mit­ted to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples, prop­er busi­ness prac­tices and re­spect for prop­er­ty and prof­it rights". He said key sec­tors ear­marked for ag­gres­sive ex­pan­sion by the Gov­ern­ment in­clude fi­nan­cial ser­vices, in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT), tourism, cre­ative in­dus­tries, agro-pro­cess­ing and mar­itime in­dus­tries.

He added that the peo­ple of T&T "are har­ness­ing the full po­ten­tial of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy; ag­gres­sive­ly im­prov­ing our skill sets as well as the work eth­ic of our labour force; and cre­at­ing a con­ducive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment"'.

The 37th An­nu­al Con­fer­ence was host­ed by Caribbean-Cen­tral Amer­i­can Ac­tion (CCAA) at the head­quar­ters of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States and the US Cham­ber of Com­merce last Thurs­day and Fri­day. It fea­tured dis­cus­sions on at­tract­ing in­vest­ment fi­nance in the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope in the Amer­i­c­as and trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture.