GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti-Me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ki­ran Ma­haraj says as a coun­try, more for­eign ex­change needs to be gen­er­at­ed, but there is al­so need to en­sure sec­tors are prop­er­ly ac­ti­vat­ed with the po­ten­tial to sup­port the needs of cit­i­zens.

“We al­so need to sup­port our sec­tors to be more lo­cal­ly con­scious, es­pe­cial­ly with our food and dig­i­tal sec­tors,” she said, while speak­ing at the post-bud­get dis­cus­sion host­ed by the cham­ber yes­ter­day ti­tled, “Cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able econ­o­my: The next big play for T&T.”

She al­so re­it­er­at­ed the call for Gov­ern­ment to deal with the cur­rent crime scourge which con­tin­ues to neg­a­tive­ly im­pact busi­ness­es.

“If we do not bring this un­der con­trol how can we feel com­fort­able to con­tin­u­ous­ly in­vest in our coun­try? How can we feel safe and hap­py as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans? The T&T Cham­ber has be­gan its jour­ney to find so­lu­tions we can of­fer to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and we have in­di­cat­ed our de­sire to work with Gov­ern­ment in oth­er ar­eas,” Ma­haraj said.

Adding that crime is every­body’s prob­lem and she said there is need to con­tin­ue to work col­lec­tive­ly to solve this prob­lem.

In speak­ing about the wider busi­ness sec­tor she ad­vised that there needs to be a sense of ur­gency with­in the con­text of ef­fi­cien­cy.

“I was sur­prised about the num­ber of in­cen­tives that are avail­able to lo­cal busi­ness­es, but which come to nought ow­ing to the lack of prop­er process and im­ple­men­ta­tion. Why can we not do what we say, so we can get the job done? If you have prob­lems and get stuck in the sys­tem—then as your Cham­ber—we want to know. We must start doc­u­ment­ing such road­blocks and ask for them to be re­solved. We can on­ly do so with your feed­back,” Ma­haraj ex­plained.

She not­ed that the in­tro­duc­tion of the cham­ber’s three new com­mit­tees: food se­cu­ri­ty, agri­cul­ture and fish­eries; phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and well­ness and the Or­ange econ­o­my were nec­es­sary ad­di­tions as the or­gan­i­sa­tion saw the need to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of these eco­nom­ic sec­tors.