Government must stop insulting citizens and investors with the empty slogan that Trinidad and Tobago is “open for business” while the country remains buried under outdated laws, paper based systems, endless approvals, poor customer service, foreign exchange uncertainty, collapsing infrastructure, rising crime, and suffocating bureaucracy.
Businesses are not asking for miracles , they are asking for efficiency, predictability, accountability, and basic competence.
Investors do not care about speeches, conferences, or fancy presentations; they care about how fast they can register a company, access approvals, move goods through ports, obtain utilities, secure foreign exchange, and operate safely without being trapped in administrative madness.
For years the private sector, professionals, and citizens have repeatedly highlighted these problems, yet successive governments continue to study, talk, delay, and commission reports while the economy slowly loses competitiveness across the region. The era of cheap gas masking inefficiency is over.
Government must now get off its rear and urgently modernize the public service, digitize approvals, reform legislation, enforce performance standards, fix infrastructure, reduce bureaucracy, and create a real investment environment before Trinidad and Tobago becomes a high cost, low productivity economy that both foreign and local businesses increasingly avoid.
Gordon Laughlin,
Westmoorings
