Trade Minister calls for ‘Transformative Change’
Friday 24 May, 2013 saw the first meeting of the Chairmen, Board of Directors, CEO’s and Senior Management of the State Agencies under the purview of the Ministry with Senator the Honourable Vasant Bharath, Minister of Trade, Industry and Investment and Minister in the Ministry of Finance and the Economy and other senior Ministry officials. The meeting, held at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, convened for State Agencies to present their achievements and plans for 2013 to the Trade Minster was also an opportunity to build and improve synergies and collaboration amongst Agencies in an effort to improve overall performance.
In addressing the one hundred and fifty plus audience, Minister Bharath stated that ‘T&T has all the right ingredients to attract and keep investors’. He made a call for transformative change in the way the Agencies operated. He said ‘bureaucracy is a bane of transformation. The change I would like to see is not incremental but transformational and it must start with the Ministry and filter down to the Boards and senior management’. He encouraged the Executives to not be bounded by the current Strategic Plans that were inherited but to review it with a critical eye to determine its relevance in achieving the Agencies’ mandates. Minister Bharath said that he was very confident in the current composition of Chairmen and Board Members who he stated ‘are of high integrity, qualified and experienced to get the job done’.
Delivering presentations at the meeting were invesTT, exporTT, Trinidad and Tobago International Financial Centre, eTecK, Trinidad and Tobago Free Zones, Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards, Export-Import Bank, Betting Levy Board and National Flour Mills Limited. The presentations detailed challenges the Agencies faced over the last financial year and strategies being implemented to create the enabling environment and stimulate increased economic activity.
A Press Conference was held in the afternoon session where members of the media got an opportunity to pose questions to the Honourable Minister, Chairmen and CEOs of the State Agencies.
Courtesy the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment