Raphael John-Lall

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Dr Vashti Guyadeen is warn­ing di­rec­tors of boards that they must pre­pare their busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions for the un­cer­tain­ties of a “volatile” world.

“If you op­er­ate in the pri­vate sec­tor of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean, you would know that volatil­i­ty has be­come the op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment. It has be­come the nor­mal, es­pe­cial­ly over the last three to four years. And in fact, since the pan­dem­ic, I would say that busi­ness­es more so are nav­i­gat­ing geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ties, sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, cy­ber threats, rapid tech­no­log­i­cal change, cli­mate risk and chang­ing trade rules,” she said.

Guyadeen spoke on Mon­day on the first day of the Caribbean Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance In­sti­tute’s (CC­GI) Gov­er­nance Week which was held vir­tu­al­ly. The theme of the pan­el dis­cus­sion that Guyadeen spoke on was “De­ci­sion Mak­ing Un­der Pres­sure: Gov­ern­ing in Re­al Time Amid Cri­sis and Com­plex­i­ty.”

She spoke of sev­er­al chal­lenges that firms in the Caribbean re­gion are fac­ing.

One is keep­ing pace with change.

Sec­ond­ly, she said, trust has be­come a busi­ness as­set.

Third­ly, she said tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing gov­er­nance it­self.

“And we have seen that through Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, da­ta pro­tec­tion, and fi­nal­ly, glob­al un­cer­tain­ty have im­pact­ed the way that we do busi­ness in the re­gion.”

She al­so made the point that in the mod­ern world, da­ta and in­for­ma­tion are every­where. How­ev­er, some of it may not be rel­e­vant for small de­vel­op­ing economies in the Caribbean and boards of com­pa­nies must recog­nise this fact when mak­ing de­ci­sions.

“The first ques­tion posed to me was that I have had to make de­ci­sions for the past six years with in­com­plete da­ta. But on the flip side, there is so much da­ta avail­able. Mean­ing that the end things now are dash­boards, da­ta an­a­lyt­ics, and most of that in­for­ma­tion that is avail­able via AI, chat­G­PT, is from ad­vanced economies,” said Guyadeen.

She said for cham­bers of com­merce, it means that they have to look at the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of that da­ta.

“Sec­ond­ly, does it ap­ply to us? So, it means look­ing at that da­ta, ap­ply­ing checks and bal­ances to de­ter­mine whether that in­for­ma­tion is valid and per­ti­nent to our sec­tor, to the Caribbean. Be­cause most, as I stat­ed be­fore, most Caribbean firms are SMEs, are mi­cro and small busi­ness­es.”

She al­so not­ed that be­cause most of the busi­ness­es in T&T and the Caribbean re­gion qual­i­fy as SME’s, the cur­rent da­ta may not ap­ply to them.

“And in most in­stances, the da­ta that is made avail­able is not ap­plic­a­ble to our sec­tor be­cause we are all SMEs. And so, it means ap­ply­ing ref­er­ence checks, checks and bal­ances be­fore you take that in­for­ma­tion to your board.”

She al­so said through­out her ca­reer as a re­searcher, she has been mak­ing de­ci­sions with­out com­plete da­ta, which is a prob­lem, she said, oth­er mem­bers of the cham­ber are con­front­ed with.

“All of my ca­reer I have been a re­searcher, and from a busi­ness sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tion per­spec­tive, our core area is ad­vo­ca­cy, and we de­pend on sur­veys in or­der to get in­for­ma­tion from mem­bers across the board. That is be­cause the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce rep­re­sents all eco­nom­ic sec­tors. So when I talk about in­com­plete da­ta, it’s not just mem­bers’ in­abil­i­ty to com­plete the sur­veys that we re­quest­ed, but mem­bers are not able to un­der­stand what geopo­lit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic is­sues they are cur­rent­ly fac­ing and how it’s go­ing to im­pact their par­tic­u­lar sec­tor.”

She re­ferred to the is­sue of the e-com­merce mora­to­ri­um that was in place since 1998 and which was set to ex­pire March of this year.

In May 1998, as the in­ter­net and glob­al elec­tron­ic com­merce were rapid­ly ex­pand­ing, World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WTO) mem­bers adopt­ed the De­c­la­ra­tion on Glob­al Elec­tron­ic Com­merce. While dig­i­tal trade was in its in­fan­cy, gov­ern­ments agreed to a tem­po­rary com­mit­ment not to tax elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions to sup­port the growth of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

The mora­to­ri­um re­quired con­tin­u­ous re­new­al by trade min­is­ters at WTO min­is­te­r­i­al con­fer­ences. While it suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­pinned glob­al dig­i­tal trade for years, the WTO’s work pro­gramme and the mora­to­ri­um it­self ul­ti­mate­ly lapsed on March 30, 2026.

Guyadeen said most of the SMEs that op­er­ate with­in the ser­vices sec­tor were not aware that such a mora­to­ri­um ex­ist­ed, much less to be faced with and ask­ing for their feed­back on how is this go­ing to im­pact their busi­ness.

“It took some ed­u­ca­tion. We had to launch an ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign to say this is go­ing to im­pact whichev­er sub-sec­tor, the an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try, how it’s go­ing to im­pact your sec­tor, and it called for a deep un­der­stand­ing, a deep dive in­to how it is that go­ing to im­pact you, when they had ab­solute­ly no idea. Be­cause they all, es­pe­cial­ly with ser­vices, they trade with­out cross­ing a bor­der, so how do you make a de­ci­sion at a man­age­ment lev­el and a board lev­el,” she said.

Dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness

Di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Grena­da, Leslie Ann Seon, who al­so spoke, ad­vised boards of com­pa­nies to pre­pare them­selves for the un­cer­tain­ties of the con­tem­po­rary world.

The pan­el­lists re­ferred to last week’s earth­quakes in Venezuela, which have caused the deaths of thou­sands and prop­er­ty de­struc­tion worth bil­lions of dol­lars.

“Do we have an evac­u­a­tion plan for our em­ploy­ees in a mul­ti-storey build­ing in the event of an earth­quake? Maybe that is a ques­tion I need to ask next so that we can have some­thing in place. You can’t pre­pare for every sin­gle risk but there is a cer­tain an­tic­i­pa­to­ry aware­ness that you can in­cul­cate in your board. Do we have a plan or pro­to­col or pol­i­cy in place?”

CEO of the CC­GI Kam­la Ram­per­sad de Sil­va agreed that giv­en that spe­cif­ic in­ci­dent which is un­fold­ing, board mem­bers of any com­pa­ny must be aware of what is hap­pen­ing.

“We may think that an earth­quake will not hurt us but then the fault lines run be­neath the earth sur­face where we can’t see and so it can hap­pen un­ex­pect­ed­ly, any­where. So are we pre­pared for crises? That fault­line in Venezuela runs through Trinidad’s south­ern part as well and so it can hap­pen in T&T too.”