DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Al­though he was on­ly ap­proached by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to lead a min­istry days ago, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj has am­bi­tious plans to re­shape Trinidad and To­ba­go’s busi­ness land­scape at a time when the coun­try con­tin­ues to face chal­lenges with its ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Ma­haraj may not be a ca­reer politi­cian, but he is no stranger to po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been aligned with the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR), Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and now, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

The Sacha Cos­met­ics founder brings over 45 years of busi­ness ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing nur­tured a home­grown brand in­to 50 mar­kets and topped Ama­zon charts.

Ma­haraj was one of the last two mem­bers to be sworn in­to the new­ly in­stalled Gov­ern­ment dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der was the oth­er min­is­ter who was sworn in. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Ma­haraj said he is fo­cused on di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, boost­ing ex­ports and strength­en­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. He al­so plans to dri­ve for­eign in­vest­ment and give the tourism sec­tor a much-need­ed boost.

Re­flect­ing on a trade mis­sion to Ghana, Ma­haraj said there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with Africa.

“Our prob­lem is we are a small coun­try. I didn’t start Sacha in a fash­ion hub—New York or Paris or LA or Mi­lan—in a lit­tle coun­try. And when you grow, you soon run out of mar­kets. You soon run out of peo­ple to sell to. We (T&T) have to ex­pand. We’re not in a big coun­try, right? So open­ing mar­kets, and I think one of the biggest mar­kets we have to ex­plore is Africa,” he said.

“They want to do busi­ness with us and we should be fo­cused. West Africa is 470 mil­lion peo­ple. Re­pub­lic Bank has 42 branch­es in Ghana and a base over there. But it takes two days to get to Ghana. But a big air­bus can go in eight hours, straight across.

“If you can­not vis­it, you can­not do busi­ness. So we have to open that mar­ket and ne­go­ti­ate. They have a sim­i­lar agree­ment, same body like over there. I don’t know their name, but we should be forg­ing a du­ty-free agree­ment with them. And we’ll have to open fac­to­ries all over the place to man­u­fac­ture for that mar­ket.”

First on his agen­da is a meet­ing with his min­istry team to chart the way for­ward. With lim­it­ed time and a clear ac­tion-ori­ent­ed ap­proach, he said he is pre­pared to hit the ground run­ning.

Ma­haraj al­so has clear ideas about how this coun­try’s for­eign ex­change cri­sis can be ad­dressed.

Not­ing that he has an acute aware­ness of the busi­ness sec­tor and prob­lems which ex­ist, Ma­haraj said his pri­ma­ry fo­cus will al­so be mak­ing the sec­tor more ac­ces­si­ble.

“We have to fo­cus on mak­ing it the eas­i­est place in the world to do busi­ness. You must set an ob­jec­tive,” he said, not­ing he has been wait­ing on an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ef­fect change for a while.

More­over, Ma­haraj be­lieves merg­ing tourism, trade, and in­vest­ment aligns with the broad­er goal of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my.

He al­so ex­pressed hope that no jobs will be lost due to the amal­ga­ma­tion of min­istries, though he has yet to meet with of­fi­cials to dis­cuss the fu­ture of em­ploy­ees.

The pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion main­tained sep­a­rate min­istries for Trade and In­dus­try, and for Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts.

Mean­while, draw­ing on his glob­al ex­pe­ri­ence, Ma­haraj not­ed the vast po­ten­tial to po­si­tion tourism as a key pil­lar of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. He em­pha­sised To­ba­go’s vi­tal role in this vi­sion and high­light­ed ma­jor op­por­tu­ni­ties in ar­eas such as med­ical tourism, sports tourism, and be­yond.

Com­ment­ing on the 10 per cent tar­iff im­posed by Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, Ma­haraj en­cour­aged busi­ness­es to think cre­ative­ly and ex­plore le­gal workarounds to help mit­i­gate its im­pact.

“There’s al­ways op­por­tu­ni­ty in any macro­eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion like this. Right? There are op­por­tu­ni­ties that could be ex­ploit­ed. We are look­ing at it ... One thing we nev­er do, we could get knocked down but fail­ure is not get­ting knocked down.”

Re­gard­ing trade with­in Cari­com and T&T’s lead­er­ship role, he ex­pressed his in­ten­tion to strength­en and build on that foun­da­tion. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged ex­ist­ing chal­lenges that hin­der ex­pan­sion in­to oth­er re­gion­al mar­kets.

When asked why he ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion to serve as a sen­a­tor and min­is­ter, Ma­haraj said he has en­trust­ed the lead­er­ship of Sacha Cos­met­ics to his son and has long felt a call­ing to give back. He pre­vi­ous­ly launched a men­tor­ship group on Face­book, Young En­tre­pre­neurs TT, and sees this new role as a chance to make an even greater im­pact on the na­tion.

He said he has been friends with the Prime Min­is­ter, with the two oc­ca­sion­al­ly shar­ing ideas that were not po­lit­i­cal. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that “it end­ed up that way.”

Ma­haraj said he in­tends to meet with both the busi­ness cham­bers and tourism stake­hold­ers in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture.