PSOTT CEO | TV6 Morning Edition | Private Sector & national transformation ahead of Mid-Year Review

[00:00:00]All right, everybody. So, welcome back. As the country looks ahead to a midyear budget review, attention is turning to the state of the economy, investor confidence, and the challenges facing the business sector amid rising costs and ongoing uncertainty. All right. So we are joined over the line this morning by Mr. Kelvin Mahabir, board member and CEO of the private sector organization of Trinidad Tobago and former president of E Tech Invest Titi and former CEO of the National Flower Mills as we discuss business expectations and economic priorities. Mr. Mahabir, good morning and thank you very much for joining us.

[00:00:49]>> Good morning and thank you for having the peace out.

[00:00:52]>> Of course. Well, I think it is safe to say that members of the business community uh they look forward to the uh midyear review every year. Um it was announced by the government uh earlier uh well last week that the budget review is just is just before us. It's to come um in the next few days. Um as you look at that Mr. Mahabir. Um, what is it that you would like to see?

[00:01:25]>> I think the budget review has traditionally been a mechanism where the Minister of Finance is seeking to fill a gap that may have developed during the early part of the fiscal.

[00:01:40]And one of the challenges that we see on the horizon now is the fact that um wage agreements have been negotiated and settled and therefore there is a gap and I know that the minister is going to be coming to parliament to get approvals for that. But I think as the private sector um what we really see is a challenge that government has where it's like you know a big family having to eat dinner with a small personal pizza and it becomes extremely difficult for everyone to get their share whether it's foreign exchange whether it's jobs whether it's disposable income that's a challenge and I think that really what we'd like to see uh the strategies around growing that from a personal pizza to a family size pizza where the pie becomes bigger. Strategies are developed to ensure that the economy grows in a particular way and in particular in terms of foreign exchange generation such that people feel better off um at the end of the day.

[00:02:50]>> Yeah. So this government would have celebrated observed its first year in office a few months ago.

[00:02:59]Um and it is no secret that they would have claimed well and the last administration uh would have had um as it relates to the economy not a very good economy. um this uh government uh would have promised well when we get into uh office we would do certain things in order to as you would have mentioned um earlier as it relates to to forex and I suspect the manufacturing sector and investments and and and so on and we have seen over the past few months where this government has promised um investments and we did see talk about the revitalization program and and things like that. Um I think the question that I'm asking this morning, are we expecting as a country too much from a government that has been in power for a year um as it relates to the state of the economy and what they would have inherited?

[00:04:08]>> Well, yes. I think that when you meet a deficit like any business person the issue really is to stem the bleeding then sure that the organization has sufficient um to continue and I think that's the challenge and the first of any government finding itself in such a situation is to ensure that they can meet their commitments that they can pay off the road bills, they can continue to survive an operate.

[00:04:50]And I know that not just government, but most people if you ask on the street now would say, well, we are waiting when the next boom comes at the end of 2027 or 2028. But I think there's a unique opportunity for Trinidad here to really look at some of the lowhanging fruits that can fill gap that the government has now found itself into. And the private sector organization of has been working since late last year and the organization was only formed in December but we have started working private formation to build with the ministry of trade and invest and tourism. The opportunities out for taking into consideration fruits of these education efforts which have started some years ago but which have not really garnered the kind of momentum that should have been done over the years to ensure that the economy does not face these shocks ever so often. whether it's because of price changes in the market for energy products or a disruption in terms of our own supply and therefore make the economy a lot more sustainable in the long term.

[00:05:53]>> Yeah. You speak about lowhanging fruits and you know there's a saying in Trinidad and Tobago Mr. Mahabir that while the grass is is growing the cow is starving. And the question that I'm going to ask is about and it may be a rhetorical question about quick fixes.

[00:06:16]And I'm and you may tell me, well, there are no quick fixes um to this problem here. But as you speak about lowhanging fruits, where are these lowhanging fruits? Is it in the manufacturing sector? Is it in tourism? Is it in the bastard child of Trinidad and Tobago that I called agriculture? So I see you have raised you have got some raised eyebrows Mr. Where are these low-lying fruits?

[00:06:44]>> I would say all of the above and for the simple reason is that this country has made efforts over the last I don't know how many years and and and we have been hearing about true diversification and when I say diversification I mean where any single industry does not get to the size or damage the economy if there is a challenge within that particular sector of the economy. So for example the the the the global benchmark is that it should be around 20% maximum so that when something happens in that sector it does not really impact the rest of the country and the country can continue to operate. So when you come back to tourism for example the PIC has set up implementation committees. Now traditionally what we have had is that we have had advisory committees advisory boards etc that works with the government of the day to try and fix some of these problems. what what we believe at private sector organization of tran Tobago is that we are not in the mode of writing more reports or publishing more articles just to say that things are not going right. So for the first time I think the private sector has really taken on this challenge of creating these sector implementation committees around agriculture and agrop processing tourism the small manufacturing enterprises the the um energy services exports etc. So that what we're doing is taking things that we already into and seeking to take away some of what we call the friction.

[00:08:26]You would have seen recently where yachts used to take um three, four, five days to clear coming into Shagaramas for example and now through efforts of the private sector and government we are able to clear yachts coming into Shagaramas within an hour and that is a significant change and allows people particularly now that you know that the hurricane season is about to that that we are south of that and people are therefore inclined to come south and not just to stay here but to partake into our tourism sector in terms of all the sites and the eco sites and the entertainment that we have partake in terms of the the repairs and maintenance of their vessels in Shagaramas the storage facilities the food that we provide and therefore become ambassadors for Tran Tobago's brand globally >> you know Mr. Muhabir, I still believe though that when it comes to business in Trinidad and Tobago, it's still a difficult exercise.

[00:09:36]I still it's a frustrating exercise.

[00:09:40]Over the years, I've spoken about this one-stop shop that is not there because um if you are an importer, you have to go to this agency for one thing and you may have to go to central um to get approvals and you may have to go to ARMA to get approvals. So that that has not happened. So the point that I'm trying to make that if we are speaking about business and if we are speaking about investments and if we are speaking about an environment to encourage that investment and to encourage entrepreneurship and so on the system it has to be stop it has to stop being so lazy and it has to be all embracing and there has to be a wider open door as it relates to business in Trinidad and Tobago.

[00:10:31]>> Yeah.

[00:10:32]>> So that that's Mal is a very good example of what the peace has been doing. So we have now set up a ease of doing business committee and you would have seen is taking like the example that we just described about the yaching sector.

[00:10:47]>> Yeah.

[00:10:48]>> And moving that now into the broader areas that affect businesses in Trina.

[00:10:53]So what really affects businesses? to describe uh certain licenses and and arrangements which significantly now are housed on what the ministry called TT Bizlink and the Ministry of Trade and that has been very efficient. It's one of the the the success stories of not just this government but past governments in terms of bringing that Crimson Logic software out of Singapore into Trinidad environment where it captures a significant part but there are certain things that are not yet within that framework. So we are looking at approvals for buildings and sites to go into business. We are looking at the whole question of the port operations and the the move movement to customs which tends to create delays for people clearing of cargo which um requires a lot more effort than is required. So there are things that are being done that are going to take some of the friction out of the system. Some of it requires longer term action. For example, um we have started to do some workarounds with the relevant parties on the the the um FIA. So that's foreign investment act. And as you know that foreign investment act was written in 1990 I think. Mhm.

[00:12:16]>> And since then a number of new legislative um things have come onto the agenda like the procurement legislation like um fair trading act etc. And those things have to make the investors coming into the country feeling that they are being catered for in this this licensing arrangement. Now that there's a ministry of investment, I think that the opportunity for putting all of that under one arrangement in a new legislative framework is going to significantly speed up a process that sometimes take 6 months to somewhere between you know 14 days and a month once all the documentation are in there.

[00:13:01]So that these things will take a bit longer to happen. In the interim, I know that government through its own cluster has gotten together and started to work with with workarounds to ensure that people are not frustrated as part of that process.

[00:13:15]>> Yeah. Um Mr. Mahab, if you could and I should have mentioned this at the beginning or I should have asked this at the beginning, but how does your organization um help uh businesses? what has been or what is the aim and objective of your organization?

[00:13:36]>> So the main issue around forming the private sector organization was to ensure that the private sector had a single voice.

[00:13:45]>> Yeah. You know in the past you would have of a lot of the various bodies including bodies in Tobago having to make their representation to governments. And many of times the same issues are being raised in different ways with with with uh government to get resolved. And therefore this was an effort to bring together as a single voice all of these various um um bodies so that they now form part of the board of POT um all of these various business organization including the regional business organization thego organizations and so on and therefore when we speak we tend to bring the the knowledge the experience the expertise of all of these and they also represent us on the various committees that we have created so that we now move away from simply speaking about what should be done to getting the people involved in the solutions that are required to make whatever um initiative we are doing happen in the shortest possible time.

[00:14:50]>> Yeah. Uh for what type of business is your organization um geared towards? Is it the the small business sector, medium, large, everyone? I think we represent the entire business sector but we have paid particular emphasis to theme sector for the simple reason that there are a couple things happening in theme sector.

[00:15:11]One is that they traditionally have operated more in the retail sector and that has been impacted negatively by since co and the FX challenges that they now have etc. So that looking at transforming some of these organizations to like manufacturing the agrop processing has been one of the things that we are doing and therefore the structures around support formemes have become important for us for example how do they get access to financing um reduce the collateral burden that has been required by the traditional financial institutions that that would allow them to get off the ground to transition faster because they can create important import substituting um mechanisms that reduce our demand for foreign exchange and as they grow and build capacity and and the ministry of trade has also started a program called um by local built trinago. Part of that program is not is not just to um market the program but to look at building capacity for these similar kinds of small organizations so that they can better able to support local consumption and eventually grow to the point where they can export out of Tobago.

[00:16:28]>> Yeah. Mr. Mahabir, I just have about a minute again. One, how do people get in contact with your uh organization and and if there's any other thing that you like to raise before you leave us this morning?

[00:16:39]Well, they can call me or email at ceop.co.

[00:16:46]And again, I think um we would like the business community, the general public to understand that we are a mechanism that is geared to implementation that we want to work towards changing the environment for business. Um we understand the challenges that the country is going through that business is going through in terms of confidence level in terms of investments etc. And we are prepared to work not just with the ministry but with all of government to build the bridges to build the strategies that are required to grow and and implement solutions for a better Trinidad and Tobago.

[00:17:28]>> Yeah, Mr. Mahabita has been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you very much for spending this time with us this morning. Until we speak again, take care.

[00:17:35]>> Thank you for having us.

[00:17:36]>> All right, everybody.