Am­cham T&T pres­i­dent Stu­art Fran­co, who was elect­ed in June, is hope­ful that the new amend­ments to the Pro­cure­ment Leg­is­la­tion will ad­dress the dif­fi­cul­ties the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mem­bers are cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing on the reg­is­tra­tion plat­form.

The amend­ments were passed in June in the Low­er House and Ju­ly in the Up­per House and the bill is ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Pres­i­dent for as­sent.

The Gov­ern­ment said the amend­ments al­low for the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) to have more over­sight over pro­cure­ment mat­ters, and for reg­u­la­tions to be cre­at­ed for the ap­proval of con­tracts of a val­ue of up to $1 mil­lion.

Fran­co told Busi­ness Guardian last week: “While we pre­ferred the need for an af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion to re­main for any amend­ment to the reg­u­la­tions, we are op­ti­mistic that we can find the right mech­a­nism to al­low the act to in­crease trans­paren­cy in the spend­ing of pub­lic mon­ey which will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on our en­tire so­ci­ety.”

He hopes with the re­cent amend­ments it can work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly as busi­ness own­ers mod­i­fy its ac­tions and op­er­a­tionalise the act to in­still pub­lic trust and make the pro­cure­ment process more trans­par­ent and less oner­ous.

Fran­co serves as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Trinidad Sys­tems Ltd (The TSL Group) and is the 17th pres­i­dent in the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 31-year his­to­ry.

He suc­ceed­ed Car­o­line Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine in June, who served a two-year term from 2021-2023.

Fran­co’s foun­da­tion­al years be­gan at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege in Port of Spain, then on to the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern On­tario (UWO).

When he re­turned in 2000, Fran­co said he was of­fered the po­si­tion at Vem­co as brand man­ag­er for SWISS and Chi­na­town. Then af­ter one year with Vem­co, he was of­fered the chance to join Fu­jit­su-ICL, a multi­na­tion­al IT com­pa­ny, as an ac­count man­ag­er. In 2003, Fran­co joined TSL as a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er. Then in 2006 he be­came a di­rec­tor and led the rev­enue gen­er­a­tion team un­til 2018 when he was ap­point­ed as the Group CEO.

Fran­co said dur­ing his work ca­reer there were chal­lenges he had to over­come, as back in 2008 he was di­ag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma, al­so known as can­cer of the lym­phat­ic Sys­tem.

He men­tioned that the doc­tors ad­vised that he did not have long to live.

“Long sto­ry short, the di­ag­no­sis, even though it was made by three dif­fer­ent doc­tors in three dif­fer­ent hos­pi­tals, turned out to be wrong. I do, how­ev­er, have a dis­ease called Sar­coido­sis, and to­day, 15 years lat­er, I’m hap­py to say that I am still in re­mis­sion and do­ing well. An ex­pe­ri­ence like that has a sig­nif­i­cant and im­me­di­ate im­pact. It’s life-al­ter­ing. Every­thing is viewed through a dif­fer­ent lens and pri­or­i­ties change,” Fran­co ex­pressed.

Asked about his vi­sion for Am­cham T&T, the pres­i­dent re­vealed that he wants to find more ways to build bridges and of­fer so­lu­tions to ob­sta­cles that threat­en the ease of do­ing busi­ness. I al­so want to en­sure that we are pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ing the lives of our em­ploy­ees and every cit­i­zen of our coun­try in every­thing that we do.

“I hope to lead the cham­ber’s ef­forts through clear, tar­get­ed, co­or­di­nat­ed, and col­lab­o­ra­tive ac­tions with the Gov­ern­ment and the Po­lice Ser­vice to ad­dress ris­ing crime so that we can once more build con­fi­dence in our econ­o­my and at­tract po­ten­tial in­vest­ment,” Fran­co said.

Ease of do­ing busi­ness

The ease of do­ing busi­ness con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge for a lot of com­pa­nies and the Am­cham T&T pres­i­dent high­light­ed that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is key to ad­vanc­ing de­vel­op­ment and at­tract­ing for­eign in­vest­ment in our coun­try.

He ac­knowl­edged that the cham­ber has the po­ten­tial to move T&T for­ward as a tech hub in the re­gion be­cause of its con­nec­tiv­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty.

“What we need is to en­sure that this flows through every sec­tor and in­dus­try so we can cre­ate a swifter, faster, and eas­i­er way of do­ing busi­ness.”

“That’s why we need to ac­cel­er­ate dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor, em­ploy in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and cus­tomer ser­vice at our ports through the ASY­CU­DA sys­tem, pro­claim and op­er­a­tionalise the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act and the Elec­tron­ic Trans­ac­tion Act to pro­mote the use of dig­i­tal sig­na­tures and in­spire pub­lic con­fi­dence,” Fran­co de­tailed.

As it re­lates to the con­tin­u­ous for­eign ex­change short­age, he said it is a very com­plex is­sue that re­quires much di­a­logue among many stake­hold­ers.

“To solve this prob­lem sus­tain­ably, we need to de­vel­op a range of pol­i­cy mea­sures that will make it eas­i­er to do busi­ness and re­sult in both the growth of lo­cal com­pa­nies and more in­vest­ment from for­eign firms. We al­so need com­pa­nies to earn for­eign ex­change to help re­lieve the ex­change crunch but that would re­quire ex­pand­ing their busi­ness be­yond our lo­cal shores,” Fran­co not­ed.

With re­spect to En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance (ESG) and its im­por­tance, the Am­cham pres­i­dent pro­nounced that busi­ness sur­vival to­day is de­pen­dent on hav­ing good re­la­tion­ships with clients, in­vestors, cus­tomers, and em­ploy­ees who want to be as­so­ci­at­ed with com­pa­nies that are not just do­ing well but are al­so a force for good in the wider com­mu­ni­ty.

There­fore, Fran­co said com­pa­nies must en­sure that they are adopt­ing sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices that pos­i­tive­ly im­pact so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal change to sur­vive and stay com­pet­i­tive, at­tract and re­tain tal­ent, ex­pand their cus­tomer base, and re­main com­pet­i­tive and at­trac­tive to in­vestors.

Ear­li­er this year Am­cham T&T said it un­der­took a study of its mem­ber­ship to de­ter­mine their un­der­stand­ing of the con­cept of ESG, their abil­i­ty to im­ple­ment ESG, and what their chal­lenges were.

“For us at Am­cham T&T, un­der­stand­ing the chal­lenges is key; for that pro­vides us and the coun­try with op­por­tu­ni­ties to dri­ve the ESG agen­da for­ward. Am­cham T&T part­nered with the UN and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware for this study and what it iden­ti­fied was that a ma­jor­i­ty of our mem­bers were fo­cused on gov­er­nance and so­cial is­sues and not en­vi­ron­men­tal- which iron­i­cal­ly is where much of the leg­is­la­tion is aris­ing.”

An­oth­er chal­lenge Fran­co point­ed out was that there is no lo­cal frame­work for ESG, so many com­pa­nies are un­der­tak­ing dif­fer­ent in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

“Com­pa­nies in­di­cat­ed an­oth­er chal­lenge was the cost and avail­abil­i­ty of ESG and en­vi­ron­ment pro­fes­sion­als to as­sist them in adopt­ing ESG. Am­cham T&T be­lieves there­fore that com­pa­nies that can ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues could rapid­ly achieve high ESG rat­ings, be­cause their so­cial and gov­er­nance scores may al­ready be high.

“Fur­ther, we see the need for a lo­cal ESG frame­work to en­hance the adop­tion and re­port­ing mech­a­nisms to en­sure a suc­cess­ful ESG im­ple­men­ta­tion across the pri­vate sec­tor,” The Am­cham pres­i­dent added.