SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC), Richie Sookhai, is cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that the new year should be bet­ter than 2021.

“Giv­en the state of the econ­o­my and the pro­posed in­jec­tion from the oil and gas sec­tor, def­i­nite­ly we will see a bet­ter year go­ing for­ward,” Sookhai said as he spoke with Guardian Me­dia on New Year’s Eve.

“How­ev­er, we hope that these monies are used in a sus­tain­able way, away from the oil and gas sec­tor," he added.

Sookhai be­lieves T&T should start look­ing at oth­er ways to di­ver­si­fy its eco­nom­ic port­fo­lio in­to ar­eas such as food and drugs, mu­sic and tourism. He said with a pub­lic-pri­vate sec­tor ini­tia­tive this can hap­pen.

In 2022, the CCIC hopes to work with the au­thor­i­ties to ease the traf­fic con­ges­tion in Ch­agua­nas.  Sookhai said be­cause of traf­fic flow, busi­ness­es on the east­ern side of the bor­ough are do­ing bet­ter.

“Busi­ness­es on the west­ern side are los­ing 60 to 70 per­cent of busi­ness that tra­di­tion­al­ly comes from the north,” he ex­plained. 

Sookhai said the time has al­so come for the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) to start look­ing at an­oth­er al­ter­na­tive be­sides wheat for flour, not­ing that many small food ven­dors would be im­pact­ed by the raise in flour prices.

"It’s about time that NFM look at di­ver­si­fy­ing their port­fo­lio and look at al­ter­nate sources of raw ma­te­ri­als, such as cas­sa­va,” Sookhai said.  

“It’s about time we look at cas­sa­va flour which is a health­i­er op­tion," he added, point­ing out that NFM should al­so look at in­cen­tives for farm­ers to pro­duce more cas­sa­va.