Raphael John-Lall

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Di­anne Joseph is con­fi­dent that T&T’s next Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young will im­ple­ment poli­cies that will as­sist the de­vel­op­ment of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,

On Jan­u­ary 3, 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced his in­ten­tion to demit of­fice as Prime Min­is­ter be­fore elec­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due lat­er this year and Young is ex­pect­ed to suc­ceed him over the next few months.

The TTC­SI is a na­tion­al um­brel­la body that brings to­geth­er all ser­vices sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions and as­so­ci­a­tions.

“T&T is al­so now prepar­ing to wit­ness the ex­it of one prime min­is­ter and the ap­point­ment of a suc­ces­sor. The TTC­SI re­spects the po­si­tion tak­en by our sit­ting Prime Min­is­ter to va­cate of­fice af­ter more than 40 years and we of­fer our thanks and ap­pre­ci­a­tion to him for all that he has done at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el on our be­half. At the same time, we of­fer our con­grat­u­la­tions to Ho­n­ourable Stu­art Young as our prime min­is­ter in wait­ing and wish to as­sure him of the sup­port of the TTC­SI,” Joseph told the Busi­ness Guardian.

She said Young has had ex­pe­ri­ence in var­i­ous min­istries from na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to en­er­gy and this has pre­pared him for his new role in lead­ing the na­tion.

“He has been with­in the Gov­ern­ment and serv­ing at var­i­ous lev­els for sev­er­al years and we are of the hum­ble view that the ex­pe­ri­ence gained would guide him in ex­e­cut­ing his du­ties as Prime Min­is­ter. We are hap­py that what ap­peared to have been chal­lenges to his ap­point­ment have been set­tled and suc­ces­sion plan­ning ap­pears to be in ef­fect.

“In this con­text there­fore, we do not an­tic­i­pate any de­cline in busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and we look for­ward to con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion with our prime min­is­ter in wait­ing, our gov­ern­ment and all stake­hold­ers as we re­dou­ble our ef­forts to work to­wards the bet­ter­ment of our twin-is­land re­pub­lic of T&T.”

She al­so spoke on the State of Emer­gency (SoE) that Young had an­nounced at the end of 2024 and its im­pact on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“From the mem­ber per­spec­tive, there were var­i­ous chal­lenges, crime be­ing one of the big­ger con­cerns. This, in our opin­ion, served as a po­ten­tial de­ter­rent to the in­crease in tourism, ear­ly clo­sure of busi­ness­es due to fear, ex­tor­tion and oth­er forms of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. How­ev­er, we took care­ful note of the ac­tions tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to treat with this chal­lenge. A State of Emer­gency was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30, 2024 and we re­main op­ti­mistic that at the end of the ex­tend­ed three-month pe­ri­od, that we will see the fruits of this ac­tion.”

She said the TTC­SI is com­fort­able that the SoE does not in­clude cur­few hours at this time and there­fore not like­ly to af­fect the op­er­a­tions of busi­ness­es, more specif­i­cal­ly the small busi­ness­es who may some­times have to open lat­er hours than usu­al to earn that ex­tra dol­lar.

“To date, the gen­er­al feed­back from our mem­bers and their clients is that there has been no loss of busi­ness due to the SoE. This is good. How­ev­er, there has been very re­cent re­ports that some cruise ships have been re­fus­ing to dock in To­ba­go. If this is the case and the threat to busi­ness on the is­land is re­al, we feel as­sured that the Min­istry and Min­is­ter of Tourism will ef­fec­tive­ly treat with the mat­ter.”

New of­fice, new CEO

Joseph told the Busi­ness Guardian that on Jan­u­ary 24, the TTC­SI will have a new lo­ca­tion for its head of­fice to bet­ter serve busi­ness­es in the ser­vices sec­tor.

She ex­plained the ra­tio­nale be­hind their new of­fice lo­ca­tion.

“The cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment calls for a con­tin­u­ous re­view of our strate­gic goals, strate­gic plan­ning and strate­gic think­ing if we are to ad­vance suc­cess­ful­ly with­in an eco­nom­ic cy­cle that may be some­what un­cer­tain at times. To this end, we have, as a pru­dent cost-cut­ting ex­er­cise, re­lo­cat­ed our of­fices from O’Con­nor Street, to #24 Kitch­en­er Street, Wood­brook from which we op­er­ate at this time. The of­fi­cial open­ing cer­e­mo­ny is card­ed for Jan­u­ary 24. Ad­di­tion­al re­cent ser­vices pro­vid­ed to our mem­bers in­clude, but are not lim­it­ed to, a week­ly ra­dio pro­gramme, a fort­night­ly tele­vi­sion pro­gramme and a week­ly news­pa­per col­umn. This, in an ef­fort to sup­port their growth and ex­pan­sion, em­ploy­ment cre­ation and the gen­er­a­tion of for­eign ex­change.”

Apart from a new of­fice, act­ing CEO, Daren Lee Sing has been con­firmed and is now the TTC­SI’s CEO.

“Since May 2024, our new board has had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­vis­it its strate­gic path and fol­low­ing guid­ance from our line min­istry, the Min­istry of Trade, to al­so re­vis­it our man­date and to strength­en all arms of our op­er­a­tions.

“In this re­gard, and as the um­brel­la as­so­ci­a­tion for the ser­vices sec­tor, we have height­ened our core func­tions of ad­vo­ca­cy, lob­by­ing, train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for and on be­half of our mem­bers with­in the ser­vices sec­tor. At the same time, we have ap­point­ed a dy­nam­ic CEO, in the per­son of Mr Daren Lee Sing along with oth­er com­pe­ten­cies to bring added val­ue to the team un­der the watch­ful eyes of a very strong board.”

She al­so spoke about oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties they have start­ed in 2025 that will greater val­ue to their mem­ber­ship.

“My board has stayed true to its promise to seek to col­lab­o­rate with our mem­bers and to en­sure that we ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties for ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, ad­vo­ca­cy and to bring their busi­ness in­to the spot­light.”

She as­sumed the po­si­tion as pres­i­dent of the TTC­SI in May of 2024 and de­scribed some of the work and suc­cess­es of the last eight months.

“The chal­lenges en­coun­tered were good as it made our new board stronger and kept our at­ten­tion of busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, lob­by­ing, train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for and on be­half of our mem­bers in check. In terms of the chal­lenges, we changed CEOs in the month of Au­gust and were re­quired to have the op­er­a­tions run un­af­fect­ed dur­ing this pe­ri­od. The board held on to our core func­tion of pol­i­cy set­ting and the strate­gic out­ward im­age of the TTC­SI and the tran­si­tion was in­deed smooth.”

She then spoke about chal­lenges that the TTC­SI and its mem­bers have en­coun­tered in re­cent times.

“From the mem­ber per­spec­tive, there were var­i­ous chal­lenges, crime be­ing one of the big­ger con­cerns. We ap­plaud the work of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, but re­main of the opin­ion that there needs to be a lev­el of re­form to their sys­tems and struc­tures to al­low for a high lev­el of ef­fec­tive­ness.”

She al­so spoke about the lack of forex which has plagued the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty for years but reached cri­sis lev­els in 2024.

“The forex is­sue al­so re­mains a con­cern as many en­tre­pre­neurs con­tin­ue to have dif­fi­cul­ty in prop­er­ly pur­su­ing their trade. We await the meet­ing that the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter of fi­nance has promised to host with stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss this is­sue.”