KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Daichin Group of Com­pa­nies, Derek Chin, is con­cerned about the weak­en­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor over op­er­at­ing in the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Speak­ing on Aakash Vani 106.5 FM Morn­ing Pan­chay­at, Chin said busi­ness­es need sup­port from the gov­ern­ment as they strug­gle to sur­vive lock­downs and pub­lic health mea­sures. He said it seems to be a “them against us” cli­mate.

Chin said the gov­ern­ment has not been lis­ten­ing to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty when they should be work­ing as part­ners to get the coun­try back on track.

He said not much has been done, and the lock­down mea­sures are go­ing on too long, and al­most six months af­ter a spike, the COVID-19 in­fec­tion rate should be low­er.

“I think that the fu­ture does not bode too well giv­en the cur­rent poli­cies, the con­tin­u­a­tion of sup­pres­sive types of poli­cies that re­al­ly act as dis­in­cen­tives. You on­ly have to look around at the world in de­vel­oped coun­tries and see how they are deal­ing with it and how they have sup­port­ed their busi­ness­es, sup­port­ed their pri­vate sec­tor in what has been a se­ri­ous event,” Chin said. 

He be­lieves the gov­ern­ment should en­cour­age new in­vest­ments, not on­ly in Trinidad but in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries. With Guyana build­ing its oil in­dus­try, he said the coun­try is head­ing to­wards cre­at­ing a new econ­o­my.

T&T busi­ness­men and women are al­ready look­ing at in­vest­ments in Guyana.

“When I go over there, which was last week, I met a whole bunch of Trinida­di­an in­vestors. I thought I was the on­ly one gain­ing the flag, but Trinida­di­ans are sharp busi­ness­men; they are not stu­pid peo­ple. They see op­por­tu­ni­ty, so you go where your cap­i­tal can work for you. In the same way, I am ap­peal­ing to the gov­ern­ment to get in­volved.”

He said Guyana does not have the pop­u­la­tion, tal­ent, re­sources or ex­pe­ri­ence like T&T and its gov­ern­ment al­ready in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try is open to for­eign in­vest­ments.

“Next door to us; one hour away, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that we can get busi­ness­es and start to earn some mon­ey and bring it back to Trinidad. The (Guyanese) gov­ern­ment is open for busi­ness. They want to see it hap­pen. They love Trinidad. They love the en­er­gy that Trinida­di­ans have. They want to in­her­it some of that.”

Chin said the COVID-19 pe­ri­od was un­prece­dent­ed and prob­a­bly one of the worst busi­ness pe­ri­ods in his­to­ry. Whether the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor can sur­vive is a big ques­tion.

“Every­body in the world now has tak­en a big hit, and the ques­tion is how we claw our­selves back. The pan­dem­ic has been good in one way and bad in an­oth­er.”

Chin said the pan­dem­ic was de­press­ing, but it made T&T sen­si­tised to ef­fi­cien­cy com­pared to the pre-COVID-19 era. Many new busi­ness­es opened, such as on­line de­liv­ery ser­vices.

Dur­ing the clo­sure of restau­rants, Riz­zoni’s Ris­torante Ital­iano ad­just­ed its mod­el to pro­vide frozen foods to su­per­mar­kets. He said man­u­fac­tur­ers al­so di­ver­si­fied their process­es to op­er­ate safe­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, busi­ness­es had to cut costs, staff and learned about the strug­gles of their peo­ple. 

How­ev­er, he found that the gov­ern­ment was not do­ing enough to en­gen­der hope in cit­i­zens to be­lieve that the coun­try would even­tu­al­ly come out of this de­pres­sion and get back to the good old days.

He was crit­i­cal about the shut­downs and the State of Emer­gency. He said these led to busi­ness own­ers mulling on how to pick up the pieces.

“I was there yes­ter­day, hop­ing that we could get to a re­open­ing soon and that we could get our staff back em­ployed, get the restau­rants back with the in-house din­ing and try to work to get things nor­malised.”