GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

As 2024 winds down and a new year is about to be ush­ered in with­in weeks, many busi­ness­es have al­ready planned their re­spec­tive paths for 2025.

Pres­i­dent of Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (GT­CIC) Ra­mon Gre­go­rio shared in­sights with the Busi­ness Guardian on what his or­gan­i­sa­tion will be seek­ing to ac­com­plish next year.

Top on the busi­ness group’s agen­da in­cludes height­ened safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for its busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as well as cus­tomers and res­i­dents, es­tab­lish­ing more busi­ness­es in­to the dis­trict, of­fer­ing more jobs to mi­grants and tack­ling the on­go­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion which con­tin­ues to be a peren­ni­al com­plaint from mo­torists and shop­pers alike.

Oth­er sig­nif­i­cant ob­jec­tives, Gre­go­rio said, are aimed at rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and ex­pan­sion, in­clud­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions po­ten­tial­ly with the In­di­an Em­bassy, var­i­ous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions among oth­ers.

“It’s re­al­ly about work­ing with these stake­hold­ers to make the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment eas­i­er through loans fi­nanc­ing, op­por­tu­ni­ties in cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and even labour and by hir­ing mi­grants in some in­stances,” the busi­ness leader said.

To fur­ther strength­en busi­ness suc­cess, var­i­ous mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing are ex­pect­ed to be signed with or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ned­co), ex­porTT and al­so cred­it unions to cre­ate var­i­ous loan fa­cil­i­ties that re­al­ly meet the spe­cif­ic needs of the small and mi­cro en­ti­ties..

“We need to have that bridge where en­tre­pre­neurs can go in­to these or­gan­i­sa­tions and as a mem­ber of the cham­ber you can ben­e­fit from these prod­ucts and ser­vices they are of­fer­ing.

“It’s re­al­ly about fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion as many mi­cro busi­ness­es are un­der­banked. Some of them still use their per­son­al ac­count for their busi­ness. We want to get them in­to the for­mal bank­ing sys­tem and not be hoard­ing large sums of mon­ey while the rest of the world is go­ing cash­less, dig­i­tal and even dig­i­tal re­tail. We want a small busi­ness to un­der­stand that to­day you may be small but you can have a glob­al mar­ket­place and we want to en­cour­age that type of think­ing via our ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing sem­i­nars and oth­er pro­grammes,” said Gre­go­rio, who is al­so a board mem­ber of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices (TTC­SI).

Recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion and the range of ex­per­tise they could of­fer, Gre­go­rio wants them to be fur­ther in­te­grat­ed in­to the Tu­na­puna com­mu­ni­ty.

“Through the col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UN­HCR (Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees) we can put the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion in­to busi­ness­es in the area to im­prove its labour force.

“We talk about a labour par­tic­i­pa­tion rate that is very low es­pe­cial­ly with cer­tain types of jobs and we al­ready have the re­source of a strong and al­so well doc­u­ment­ed mi­grant pop­u­la­tion that could be ab­sorbed in­to the busi­ness­es in Tu­na­puna. We have al­ready start­ed but we want a wider ex­panse and to givine them more op­por­tu­ni­ties for em­ploy­ment,” he ex­plained.

On whether this might re­sult in back­lash from T&T’s cit­i­zens seek­ing jobs, Gre­go­rio said the aim is not to be coun­ter­in­tu­itive.

“Stud­ies would show that the lo­cal labour force is not par­tic­i­pat­ing at the low­er rungs of em­ploy­ment so there is a lack of sup­ply of cer­tain skill sets. For ex­am­ple, in the man­u­fac­tur­ing space there are lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties both for lo­cals and mi­grants but you tend to find mi­grants par­tic­i­pat­ing in that space a lot bet­ter. This not on­ly fills a gap but it im­proves the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the busi­ness and cre­ates greater ef­fi­cien­cy,” he added.

Re­gard­ing im­proved traf­fic man­age­ment, talks con­tin­ue to de­vel­op a holis­tic plan with key stake­hold­ers such as the Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and trans­port en­gi­neers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

Crit­i­cal to these plans is al­so to pro­vide more park­ing space es­pe­cial­ly to fa­cil­i­tate shop­pers year-round and not on­ly at peak pe­ri­ods.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, lob­by­ing for ser­vice-type in­dus­tries is al­so on the cards for 2025.

“Many ser­vices do not get their chance to shine. They don’t get the op­por­tu­ni­ties that some of the phys­i­cal goods sec­tor like man­u­fac­tur­ing-type busi­ness­es get. It’s about part­ner­ing with or­gan­i­sa­tions to shine the light on the ser­vices in­dus­try which is a huge con­trib­u­tor to the GDP of T&T,” Gre­go­rio said, not­ing that this in­dus­try em­ploys over 85 per cent of the labour force.

Re­flec­tions on 2024

One of the key ini­tia­tives the GT­CIC achieved for 2024 is the com­mis­sion­ing of its Ea­gle Eye Project, which is now set to be ex­pand­ed across Trinidad.

The project was ini­tial­ly launched by GT­CIC and the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil and has a net­work of some 400 cam­eras which feeds di­rect­ly to the po­lice com­mand cen­tre.

Now, there are plans to ex­pand it across Trinidad.

More im­por­tant­ly, the Ea­gle Eye has helped the com­mu­ni­ty achieve a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in in­ci­dents of crime, re­sult­ing in a height­ened sense of com­fort and se­cu­ri­ty..

“It’s no se­cret re­gard­ing the re­ports of crime and ex­tor­tion which makes the ease of do­ing busi­ness a chal­lenge,” Gre­go­rio said, as he at­test­ed that since its im­ple­men­ta­tion the Ea­gle Eye con­tin­ues to bear fruit, re­sult­ing in some court con­vic­tions for var­i­ous crimes such as rob­beries which were cap­tured via video sur­veil­lance.

“We were able to have ev­i­dence doc­u­ment­ed and that is very im­por­tant. Busi­ness­es must be able to feel com­fort­able to run their op­er­a­tions in the way that they en­vi­sion it,” he added

Re­gard­ing ex­tor­tion, he ad­mit­ted this has reared its head in Tu­na­puna with there be­ing about 10 to 15 re­ports for 2024 re­sult­ing in some busi­ness­es pack­ing up and leav­ing.

How­ev­er, he main­tained the ef­forts of the po­lice in nab­bing per­pe­tra­tors has im­proved and busi­ness­es have ac­tu­al­ly been re­turn­ing to the area.

“We are not go­ing to put our heads in the sand and pre­tend ex­tor­tion does not ex­ist in Tu­na­puna...I am very con­cerned about ex­tor­tion. I am a busi­ness­man be­fore I’m the cham­ber pres­i­dent and it is very con­cern­ing if you have de­vot­ed all of your re­sources, you have put things in place to run your busi­ness in a par­tic­u­lar way and you have el­e­ments com­ing to take that away from you,” Gre­go­rio said.

While SMEs are still strug­gling with the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change, there is a sliv­er lin­ing to this cloud as some have turned to used lo­cal in­puts.

This, Gre­go­rio de­scribed has been a bless­ing in dis­guise as the end re­sult means sup­port­ing oth­er en­ti­ties which leads to fur­ther eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment and even the emer­gence of new sec­tors as the de­mand al­so grow.

“We have quite a few man­u­fac­tur­ers in our space and ob­vi­ous­ly the lim­it on the cred­it cards is a chal­lenge and busi­ness­es are feel­ing the brunt but it has al­so made them more re­source­ful.

“They are us­ing lo­cal raw ma­te­ri­als and it has forced some to make al­ter­na­tive arrange­ment to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly,” he added.