New­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) Son­ji Pierre-Chase is vow­ing to tack­le T&T's high food im­port bill, elim­i­nate the bu­reau­cra­cy ham­per­ing day-to-day busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, ad­dress the for­eign ex­change crunch as well as en­gage in con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers re­gard­ing crime and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, Pierre-Chase, the first at­tor­ney to hold the post of cham­ber pres­i­dent, spoke about burn­ing is­sues fac­ing the coun­try and its cit­i­zens while mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions.

Dur­ing her tenure which is for one year, Pierre-Chase who has the op­tion to seek re-elec­tion, said the high food im­port bill re­mains con­cern­ing, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en se­vere for­eign ex­change chal­lenges.  

“Through our food se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee, we are com­mit­ted to work­ing to­wards re­duc­ing our food im­port bill. Hav­ing pre­sent­ed our po­si­tion pa­per on forex chal­lenges to the min­istry of fi­nance, we in­tend to con­tin­ue to work with the Gov­ern­ment and Cen­tral Bank on this is­sue as it re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness con­cern,” she out­lined.

Through the cham­ber's Dig­i­tal Busi­ness and Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mit­tee, Pierre-Chase fur­ther not­ed plans to work with the Gov­ern­ment at digi­tis­ing the coun­try's busi­ness land­scape to bol­ster the ease of do­ing busi­ness and more im­por­tant­ly, elim­i­nate bu­reau­cra­cy which con­tin­ues to ham­per every­day busi­ness.

Not­ing that crime con­tin­ues to be one of the ma­jor de­ter­rents to busi­ness op­er­a­tions, Pierre-Chase al­so shared that the cham­ber's Crime and Jus­tice Com­mit­tee would con­tin­ue work­ing with the TTPS and all stake­hold­ers.  

“As the board cham­pi­on for our Crime and Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, I in­tend to re­fo­cus the cham­ber’s con­tri­bu­tions in ad­dress­ing crime and se­cu­ri­ty,” she added.

An­oth­er as­pect the at­tor­ney with 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence wants to work on is plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on the cham­ber's To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, as she be­lieves that some­times its work is un­der-re­port­ed as she de­scribed the di­vi­sion as be­ing the true voice of busi­ness in To­ba­go.

Re­gard­ing small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), Pierre-Chase said more than 66 per cent of its mem­bers fall in­to this cat­e­go­ry, adding that the aim is to en­sure the growth and de­vel­op­ment of this sec­tor.  

“The min­istry of fi­nance through the cat­alyt­ic fund man­aged by Ex­im­bank has com­mit­ted fi­nan­cial sup­port to al­low us to achieve our ob­jec­tives,” she said.

On plans to help SMEs es­pe­cial­ly to ad­vance in the age of Fin­tech, Pierre-Chase out­lined that in ad­di­tion to the cham­ber's SME con­fer­ence, Cat­a­lyst, which has be­come a sig­na­ture an­nu­al event geared to­wards pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port to SMEs, the cham­ber would al­so con­tin­ue col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC).  

“As TTIFC is the na­tion­al body work­ing to­wards mak­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go a Fin­tech-en­abled fi­nan­cial hub, we see our part­ner­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TTIFC as cru­cial in pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary sup­port to the SME Sec­tor. We recog­nise that many SMEs don’t have ac­cess to fi­nan­cial ser­vices and lack fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and re­sources to prop­er­ly de­vel­op and grow. It is there­fore our in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue our col­lab­o­ra­tion to see the Fin­tech space trans­form the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor and land­scape with of­fer­ings that sup­port the growth of the SME sec­tor and greater fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy,” she said.

Im­pact of US tar­iffs

On April 2, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced sweep­ing 10 per cent tar­iffs on im­ports from all coun­tries on Wednes­day, ful­fill­ing a pledge to re­tal­i­ate against coun­tries he had said had treat­ed the US un­fair­ly.

T&T is among the coun­tries that trade with the US and would al­so in­cur a 10 per cent tar­iff on goods ex­port­ed to that coun­try.

How­ev­er, in an an­nounce­ment on Thurs­day the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion paused these tar­iffs for 90 days.

Re­spond­ing to how these tar­iffs and their pos­si­ble im­pact on T&T, Pierre-Chase said the cham­ber's Trade and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Unit would be es­tab­lish­ing an Ex­porters’ Help Desk in­tend­ed to pro­vide crit­i­cal sup­port to its mem­bers as they tra­verse cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al flux and ten­sions in glob­al trade.  

“We al­so in­tend to of­fer mar­ket re­search and busi­ness in­tel­li­gence ser­vices to our mem­bers to en­able them to nav­i­gate evolv­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, iden­ti­fy emerg­ing trends and stay com­pet­i­tive. Our CEO, Vashti Guyadeen, is pas­sion­ate about us­ing da­ta and an­a­lyt­ics to de­vel­op suit­able so­lu­tions that sup­port busi­ness sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­silience,” Pierre-Chase said.

With in­ter­na­tion­al trade be­ing part of her back­ground, Pierre-Chase was al­so asked how she in­tends to help strength­en re­la­tions with busi­ness groups both in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly.    

“On the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sphere, the T&T Cham­ber is the on­ly pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion that is a mem­ber of the Caribbean Cham­bers of Com­merce (Caricham) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce (ICC). T&T Cham­ber is al­so a mem­ber of the Caribbean Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO). I in­tend to lever­age these re­sources to ex­plore busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for our mem­bers and projects geared to­wards strength­en­ing busi­ness sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­silience, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing cur­rent glob­al trade ten­sions,” Pierre-Chase added.

Plans go­ing for­ward

Through its stand­ing com­mit­tees, the cham­ber in­tends to host sev­er­al work­shops specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress­ing the main na­tion­al is­sues such as crime, food se­cu­ri­ty, the on­go­ing forex is­sues and pro­gress­ing the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of do­ing busi­ness in T&T to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness rank­ing.

“Our sig­na­ture an­nu­al event, Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness (COB), which recog­nis­es and cel­e­brates cham­pi­ons in busi­ness will be held in No­vem­ber. It’s the 20th an­niver­sary of COB, so our in­ten­tion is for a grand event," Pierre-Chase said.

About the new cham­ber pres­i­dent

Pierre-Chase has been part of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce for a long time, as she was em­ployed as its le­gal coun­sel in 2003 and even­tu­al­ly be­com­ing its trade, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and le­gal man­ag­er in 2005.  

She said com­ing from with­in the heart of the cham­ber and work­ing along­side lead­ers in busi­ness as a young at­tor­ney has po­si­tioned her to un­der­stand na­tion­al is­sues af­fect­ing busi­ness.  

“My over­all fo­cus is to en­sure that the T&T Cham­ber re­gains its stand­ing as the na­tion­al cham­ber in shap­ing the busi­ness land­scape and con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” she added.

The new pres­i­dent is al­so an Ari­ma girl, who was ed­u­cat­ed at Catholic schools, from pre to sec­ondary.

“I am there­fore ground­ed by my faith. When I grad­u­at­ed from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School in 2000, my first job as an at­tor­ney was in Petrotrin, not based at the re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre but in its ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion unit in San­ta Flo­ra.  

“An Ari­ma girl sent to work in deep South was a mind-blow­ing but re­mark­able ex­pe­ri­ence for me. Af­ter Petrotrin, I end­ed up at the T&T Cham­ber. The switch from the oil and gas sec­tor to trade was a re­sult of hav­ing com­plet­ed a Mas­ter of Law De­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Law.  It was a per­fect fit for me. And here I am to­day,” she added.