TT Chamber launches Catalyst SME conference

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce launched the sec­ond Cat­a­lyst SME Con­fer­ence at its head­quar­ters in West­moor­ings on Wednes­day.

En­tre­pre­neurs, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, fi­nanciers and pri­vate sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives at­tend­ed the event to dis­cuss mea­sures for Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es.

The con­fer­ence is held un­der the theme “Turn­ing Po­ten­tial in­to Per­for­mance”.

The TT Cham­ber said the event pro­vides a fo­rum to ad­dress ac­cess to fi­nance, use of da­ta in de­ci­sion mak­ing and links be­tween busi­ness­es and mar­kets.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the TT Cham­ber, Vashti Guyadeen, spoke at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

Guyadeen said SMEs rep­re­sent just un­der 70 per­cent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mem­ber­ship.

She added that SMEs form part of the pro­duc­tive sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go and said Cat­a­lyst was cre­at­ed as a fo­rum for en­tre­pre­neurs to re­ceive in­for­ma­tion, build net­works and ac­cess tools for busi­ness growth.

Guyadeen said the con­fer­ence fo­cus­es on agri­cul­ture, cre­ative in­dus­tries and ser­vice sec­tors.

The pro­gramme over two days in­cludes dis­cus­sions on ac­cess to cap­i­tal, use of da­ta and links with dis­trib­u­tors and firms.

Guyadeen said ses­sions will al­so ex­am­ine op­por­tu­ni­ties in agri-busi­ness and the Or­ange Econ­o­my.

The con­fer­ence con­tin­ues on Thurs­day with ses­sions in­volv­ing en­tre­pre­neurs, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Par­tic­i­pants are sched­uled to ex­am­ine fi­nanc­ing op­tions, mar­ket ac­cess and part­ner­ships for SMEs in Trinidad and To­ba­go.