Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Pa­tri­cia Ghany has been re-elect­ed as Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T).

This is Ghany’s third term as the Am­cham pres­i­dent af­ter ini­tial­ly be­ing elect­ed to the po­si­tion in 2018.

Ghany was elect­ed yes­ter­day at Am­cham’s first-ever vir­tu­al An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing.

Speak­ing on the theme “Busi­ness in the New Nor­mal” in re­sponse to the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Ghany laid out the Cham­ber’s vi­sion and plans both for so­ci­ety and the role for busi­ness. 

“Our suc­cess as a coun­try can­not be mea­sured sim­ply by GDP growth. Nei­ther can our busi­ness­es’ suc­cess be mea­sured on­ly by prof­it. From what I have seen in my more than two decades as part of Am­cham T&T and in my own busi­ness, for the most part, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has al­ways tak­en an in­ter­est and sup­port­ed both fence-line com­mu­ni­ties and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” she said. 

“Now, we may need to do a lit­tle more and, quite frankly, com­mu­ni­cate what we do a lit­tle bet­ter. This is be­yond CSR. It’s about build­ing re­silient com­mu­ni­ties and con­tribut­ing to the over­all sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the coun­try and, hope­ful­ly, the re­gion,” Ghany said.

Ghany said even in the new nor­mal, the old, fun­da­men­tal rules still ap­ply, es­pe­cial­ly the rule of law. “Fair­ness and ac­cess to jus­tice are key to de­vel­op­ing a con­ducive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. But so too are they to build­ing a re­silient and co­he­sive so­ci­ety.

In the old nor­mal or the new nor­mal, strong ad­her­ence to the rule of law is key,” she said.

Ghany said as a coun­try, we need to do a bet­ter job of fix­ing the sys­tems that in­hib­it so­cial mo­bil­i­ty and per­pet­u­ate in­equal­i­ty. 

“We can­not fool our­selves by talk­ing about out­liers who emerge suc­cess­ful­ly from struc­tur­al in­equity and try to hold them up as ex­am­ples that can be eas­i­ly repli­cat­ed. As cit­i­zens, we should have a vest­ed in­ter­est in mak­ing our so­ci­ety bet­ter. And as busi­ness­es, we should see that if the rule of law is as­sured for those who are of­ten most in­vis­i­ble and on the “mar­gins of so­ci­ety” it will be as­sured for busi­ness too, mak­ing the en­tire econ­o­my more ef­fi­cient and at­trac­tive,” she said.

Ghany said as the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains the main­stay of this coun­try’s econ­o­my, and will con­tin­ue to be so in the short and medi­um term, it is im­per­a­tive that we ad­dress is­sues around the en­er­gy val­ue chain.

“I am not be­ing alarmist when I say that con­tin­ued in­ac­tion and re­luc­tance to make de­ci­sions is putting the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in jeop­ardy. We need to act and act fast on this, but at this point, I pre­fer not to say more,” she said.

Ghany said the coun­try al­so needs to tran­si­tion to re­new­able en­er­gy, lever­ag­ing both our nat­ur­al as­sets but al­so the tech­nol­o­gy and ex­per­tise of the multi­na­tion­als al­ready op­er­at­ing and in­vest­ed in T&T.