The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) met with Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, on Tues­day, with the talks fo­cussed on gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy for eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion and the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment.

Dis­cus­sions in­clude the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of cap­i­tal for pub­lic projects, op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­creased pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment in the econ­o­my, new growth sec­tors, the re­con­sti­tu­tion of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board and the Com­pet­i­tive­ness Coun­cil as well as car­bon cred­its, and the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion to op­er­a­tionalise the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute.

In a re­lease, Am­cham T&T said it wel­comed the min­is­ter’s for­ward-think­ing ap­proach and his open­ness to greater pri­vate sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion.

CEO Ni­rad Tewarie ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in sub­stan­tive di­a­logue.

"Am­cham T&T looks for­ward to work­ing with the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment to ad­vance these pro­pos­als and build on the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween our re­spec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions. There is great po­ten­tial for pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship to ac­cel­er­ate na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and we are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing those ef­forts," Tewarie said.

Al­so rep­re­sent­ing Am­cham T&T were di­rec­tors Griselle Smith (IBM) and Natasha Ash­by (At­lantic LNG) along with chair of the ESG com­mit­tee, In­du Shar­ma (QED Con­sult­ing).