An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porteran­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj says the Gov­ern­ment is tar­get­ing an in­crease in ex­ports from US$2 bil­lion to US$4 bil­lion as part of ef­forts to strength­en the non-en­er­gy sec­tor and dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Min­istry’s “Dri­ving Eco­nom­ic Growth Be­yond En­er­gy – One Year Re­port” at the Hy­att Re­gency, Ma­haraj said the Min­istry’s role is to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, while the pri­vate sec­tor re­mains the en­gine of growth.

He said one of the Min­istry’s first ob­ser­va­tions af­ter tak­ing of­fice was that the pri­vate sec­tor op­er­at­ed through frag­ment­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions with­out a uni­fied na­tion­al struc­ture for strate­gic en­gage­ment.

That led to ef­forts to en­cour­age the for­ma­tion of a na­tion­al pri­vate sec­tor body ca­pa­ble of co­or­di­nat­ing non-en­er­gy growth ini­tia­tives.

Ma­haraj point­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (PSOTT) in De­cem­ber 2025, de­scrib­ing it as a ma­jor step to­ward stronger pub­lic-pri­vate col­lab­o­ra­tion.

He said the Min­istry al­so iden­ti­fied its core pri­or­i­ties as ex­port growth and for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion, in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion, tourism de­vel­op­ment, na­tion­al qual­i­ty im­prove­ment, and reg­u­la­to­ry re­form.

Ma­haraj said the Min­istry has spent the past year work­ing to im­prove co­or­di­na­tion be­tween agen­cies and re­move long­stand­ing ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing in­vest­ment and ease of do­ing busi­ness.

He not­ed that week­ly strate­gic re­view meet­ings in­volv­ing Min­istry ex­ec­u­tives and PSOTT rep­re­sen­ta­tives have strength­ened ac­count­abil­i­ty and ex­e­cu­tion across sev­er­al ar­eas.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the event, Ma­haraj was asked how the Gov­ern­ment planned to move ex­ports from US$2 bil­lion to US$4 bil­lion. He re­spond­ed that the Min­istry has al­ready iden­ti­fied the coun­try’s top 50 ex­porters and has been di­rect­ly en­gag­ing them to de­ter­mine what sup­port they need to ex­pand.

“We didn’t wait for them to come to us. We went to them and asked them, what can we do for you to ex­pand?” Ma­haraj said.

He de­scribed ex­ist­ing ex­porters as the “low­est hang­ing fruit” be­cause they al­ready have the in­fra­struc­ture in place to scale op­er­a­tions quick­ly, while the Min­istry is al­so tar­get­ing new ex­porters.

Asked about tourism growth amid un­cer­tain­ty in the oil and gas sec­tor, Ma­haraj said the fo­cus is on at­tract­ing high-val­ue vis­i­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly the yacht­ing mar­ket.
He said pro­cess­ing times for yacht vis­i­tors en­ter­ing T&T have been re­duced from an av­er­age of four hours to about 15 min­utes fol­low­ing up­grades to port health and im­mi­gra­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

Ma­haraj al­so con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment is fa­cil­i­tat­ing sev­er­al ho­tel de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing the Hilton-brand­ed ho­tel project in San Fer­nan­do.

When ques­tioned about con­cerns sur­round­ing crime and its im­pact on tourism, Ma­haraj said the is­sue re­mains a pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment.

“The Gov­ern­ment, and we have two very com­pe­tent min­is­ters that’s re­spon­si­ble for that un­der the lead­er­ship of the Prime Min­is­ter,” Ma­haraj stat­ed.

The min­is­ter added that im­prove­ments are al­ready be­ing seen, al­though more work re­mains ahead.

“We are see­ing ma­jor im­prove­ments, but we still have a long way to go. And we know that, and we’re work­ing very hard.”