Shal­iza Has­sanali

Of the 21 Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rums (CBF) held through­out the globe, T&T has been de­scribed as the best par­tic­i­pant since 1971. The praise came from Paul Skin­ner, chair­man of the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Coun­cil, as he wrapped up the clos­ing ses­sion of the (CBF) yes­ter­day, on board the vis­it­ing cruise lin­er Ser­e­nade of the Seas. De­liv­er­ing his fi­nal words to the busi­ness sec­tor, Malaysia Prime Min­is­ter Da­to Seri Na­jib Tun Razak and di­rec­tor and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Coun­cil Dr Mo­han Kaul, Skin­ner said, in num­bers, the CBF was the best ever and even tipped his hat to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning for host­ing the event.

The first CBF was held in 1971. Dur­ing the four days of ple­nary ses­sions, Skin­ner re­vealed that more than 1,000 busi­ness and gov­ern­ment lead­ers from 50- plus coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ed. "We were priv­i­leged to have dis­cus­sions with ten heads of gov­ern­ment and 40 min­is­ters," he said. "More than 30 sub­stan­tive ses­sions were held on the is­sues of the day, each gen­er­at­ing rec­om­men­da­tions and ideas for gov­ern­ment and busi­ness." All the ses­sions have been sum­marised and would be on-line. Al­so, streamed all ple­nary pre­sen­ta­tions would be live on CBC Web site next week.

The host­ing of the CBF, Skin­ner said, pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op the nat­ur­al po­si­tion of the re­gion as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor for link­ages be­tween the Com­mon­wealth and the Amer­i­can coun­tries. "New trade busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween the Com­mon­wealth and the Amer­i­c­as il­lus­trate the po­ten­tial of new part­ner­ship with­in a glob­alised econ­o­my," Skin­ner said. "This fo­rum il­lus­trat­ed that the po­ten­tial is scarce­ly tapped. A large ma­jor­i­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness del­e­gates to Trinidad and To­ba­go have nev­er en­gaged with the Caribbean be­fore." He al­so not­ed that sus­tain­able growth re­quired a pos­i­tive and syn­er­getic re­la­tion­ship be­tween mar­kets and peo­ple. Skin­ner al­so urged the heads of gov­ern­ment to look at the fo­rum's rec­om­men­da­tions.