And I want to especially thank the wonderful persons who have made all of your lives comfortable here today. Those who are serving you guys. Give them a big round of applause.
I want to thank them for their hard work and for making all of us so comfortable today. You know, it is always a great honor to be in Trinidad and Tobago where I share so many friendship. It is an honor to be among persons who share the same values, the same challenges and of course the same opportunities.
I'm also particularly mindful that we are here in partnership. We're not going to decide whether it's curry chicken or chicken curry. We are going to agree that we're going to have curry.
And then to my disappointment, there is no curry. And then we look at everything that is going on around us. And I sought to create maybe uh or try to create a mood of critical thinking.
I know that you are critically involved with your food and I don't know how many of you got to see some of the videos that were presented because the videos were meant for us to go beyond the present to look beyond the inward realities and to exercise our minds to something different. something in some instances new because you're all successful people here. We don't need to tell you how to be successful, but we need to perhaps explore the possibilities of the future in a different frame.
And it is in that spirit that I wish to share a few thoughts with you. Some of which you can throw out of the window, some of which you might agree with, but I'll still share them. The partnership between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago started a long time ago.
From the simple samp family, taking Gy wood, adding value to it here, and then reexporting it throughout the Caribbean. to the simple trader coming to Guyana to buy shark fin to bring here and package and resell. The trader finding a market for Bangary coming to Guyana and get it.
and the simple men and women from Guyana coming during a difficult time in our history to do what you would remember as a suitcase trade, buying simple things as flour and bread and taking back to our country. So there is absolutely no doubt that our partnership is rooted in history, in culture, shared difficulties and challenges and can also be rooted in the future in shared prosperity. But we must agree.
And one of my friends earlier, Miss Chase, Miss Chase, right? Yeah. Started with the scriptures.
And I would like to follow you because the scriptures provide clear guidelines as to how neighbors must live and support each other. Scriptures say we must have ethical guidelines that guide the way we conduct business. We must treat each other with the same integrity, care and desire that we have for ourselves.
And we must start from this point. If we are to define a new partnership and relationship, government must not hide behind bureaucracy and private sector must not hide behind inefficiency. And I say this not lightly.
If Guyana and Trindad and Tobago must present a partnership that is meaningful, that is gripping, that is innovative, and that will propel our people to higher levels of prosperity. We must have the discipline, the commitment, the maturity, and the will to make the changes that are necessary to advance this agenda. This agenda cannot be advanced by ordinary citizens spending hours to pass through basic immigration and customs.
This partnership cannot be advanced by complaining of having power for industrial development at 6 cents per kilowatt because we will not be competitive in the real world when the average price is 16 cents per kilowatt. We have to re-engineer our businesses in the real world on the real competition and the real practical the real practical business environment. We have to re-engineer as your conference say today re-engineer for success and re-engineer taking into consideration the realities of the environment we live in.
One of our big problems in this region is that we have always been satisfied with inward-looking policies. And I will give some examples today as the countries that took different approach to growth and development. And the advice that I give is for myself and all of us in this room because I put myself and Guyana under the same leverage as I outline here for all of us.
From those videos you'd have seen Rorima northern Brazil and what is taking place there and the question is with power at 6 cents and less for a number of decades in Trinidad and Tobago why we don't have a southbound investment portfolio from Trinidad that add value to all of those raw material and take it throughout the Caribbean. Guyana years ago under the Jagu Initiative for agriculture offer Trinidad and Tobago investors and private sector lands to invest in Guyana. Imagine if you had took that offer then invest for the food security of the region.
Today many of the personalities from the banking sector here and of course the major companies in our region which reside here today. Guyana and Rory are combining its food power to create a food ecosystem that will be global in nature. We cannot look at energy in a narrow sense.
We have to look at what energy enables. And in Qatar, energy enabled Qatar to make strategic investments in different markets. Take away a few of the large companies.
Where are our strategic investments? Where are our strategic investments that guarantee food security, regional energy security, regional climate security? Where are these strategic investments?
We have so much liquidity in the system and still so many of the island states are looking for capital for long-term power purchase agreement on renewables. We have silica sand of the quality that you can make solar panels with. We have minerals in the region.
How do we build a consortium leveraging the capital, leveraging the experience, leveraging the natural resources to not control but to participate in this market and that is where that's one example that is where I want us to position our minds today. If you are solving the known, you're not doing any anything exciting. In every equation, solving the unknown is where excitement lies.
So we know one trade route all our lives and we did not examine another trade route. It's time for us maybe, just maybe, to look at the all the other directions and to see what we can accomplish. We have to plan beyond our comfort.
We have to forge footprints of the future with yesterday's shadow and today's reality. We have to future proof our economies. And that is why my dear friend, we can't future proof our economy believing that subsidies are the answers.
We have to futureproof our economies by investing in the economy of the future. By investing in the technology, digitization and by government systems offering the fiscal framework that would allow the private sector the confidence of investing in futureproofing the national economy and their businesses. And as policy makers, that is our only role to create that enabling environment that allows the private sector to grow, advance, and build up their own capacity.
That would allow the private sector to be successful, grow wealth, advance jobs in a policy frame and a policy environment that is trusted. reliable, consistent and one in which investors confidence grow day by day. And this is important.
If we want to build this partnership, we have to get all the stakeholders in the room, the private sector, the two governments and have a frank discourse as to what are those barriers disallowing us from advancing. Today if some of the barriers did not exist with the leverage Trinidad and Tobago has you would have had maybe the first honey bank in the world. You would have had a uh aggro processing facility that will take all of the lemon and lime and process it to meet all the global demand.
You could have had all the juice produced natural juice produced with fruits coming in from Guyana and Oria. Sometimes, just sometimes, we need to stop and make those hard changes [snorts] both in Guyana, Trinidad, and the rest of the region. Protectionism cannot cannot and will not allow any of us to be successful in the new world.
[applause] The only formula is building our competitiveness, integrating our competitive advantage and building a common platform through which our products in the region can first be competitive within the region and then extra regionally. That is where I believe humbly we should be positioning ourselves. So future proofing and I saw earlier you had one of the fly lines about market expansion.
Which market are we expanding to? And then it spoke about re-engineering to accomplish our goals. There's a concept of market expansion and there's a concept of market integration and market penetration all marry together.
So if we ask the ordinary business where are you expanding to? We look at the known markets. But what is the geopolitical environment telling us?
The geopolitical environment is telling us that two massive markets will open up or has the possibility of opening up in a remarkable way in the short term. Haiti and Cuba. Imagine now the size and possibility of those two markets opening up.
the time frame for them to rebuild capacity whether it's in food agrop processing they will have a long lack time. How are we positioning ourselves in the eyes of this geopolitical shift that is occurring? What are we investing in to position ourselves?
How are we going to define our presence there? And if we come together, we can develop a powerful consortium that can position Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago to be force movers when those opportunities arise. And that is and this is where the opportunities are.
How are we positioning ourselves to be first movers? We have maybe more than 300 Trindad businesses operating in Guyana. There's a difference between trying to build a road and build a building than having long-term forest moving investment.
Forest movers investment. And this calls for us thinking outside of the box and thinking beyond our comfort zone. And I just wanted to present maybe a few slides.
They told me I have 10 minutes. My time is up already. So you just tell me when to come off the stage and I'll come off.
So I want to present just a few slides and th this is not meant to analyze any economy. This is just meant for us to be aware and to make decisions that comes from clarity of thought. So we have two nations at two different stages of development.
Of course we have Trinidad and Tobago, a giant evolving industrial economy but currently coping with a challenge of natural gas decline and declining oil resource. Of course, that can change with exploration that is ongoing or that will be ongoing soon. In Guyana, we have an emerging pro state experiencing an unprecedented capital investment boom and rapid tool track growth.
So, this is the economies that we may want to twin. you have your mic I can uh economies that you I don't like to read speeches actually I just uh economies that we want to twin and we have to ex examine where we are and how do we approach this twinning uh process and here we have of course a slide that speak about the industrial success and we have to agree that Trindad and Tobago achieve enormous industrial success. You have the ammonia bridge, a world-class exporter of ammonia and methanol.
The sector is the primary foreign exchange earner, a massive employer. And then you have successfully bridge primary energy resources with high value downstream manufacturing. So we notice that these are things that you would have done then in Guyana what we have you what we are trying to achieve is using the windfall gains to aggressively fund the expansion of the non-oil sector construction annual growth is beyond 30% agriculture beyond 10% mining and quarrying uh beyond 22%.
And the goal is to build a worldclass diversified economy. And just to tell you how fast we're moving with diversification, I think our friend, the incoming chair of the chambers pointed to the DR. How are we identifying partners?
Many would say the DR you can't compete with the DR in the food space. So we have identified DR for example as a strategic partner and Brazil the largest food producer raw food producer in the world as two strategic partners in the diversification and we have made a decision to incentivize not energy but to incentivize the diversified economy we want to build. So to create particular incentives for health because we want a world-class health care system that will be a revenue earner in the future bringing the best doctors, the best facilities, the best equipment and reaching for the best.
So we're working with Mount Sinai Northwell and Apollo and we're saying to them, we just don't want you to give us technical assistance. We want you within 10 years to be comfortable to put your brand on our health facility so your brand becomes part of what we sell. We're doing the same thing for education.
We launched the Guyana Digital School where everybody can connect 247. Again, we reach for the best technology. And let me say that you have to be bold too.
We developed the ministry of government efficiency. We brought the best technology providers within the country. Then we look for pairing outside of the country.
And we are advancing at a rapid pace in the digitization and the building out an AI backbone for Cayenne. And why is it important? Because our societies are so small, as far as possible, we must remove human biases from the system.
Biases where a custom officer can sit and decide whether this this this uh um product falls under this category or the other. So we want this to be on an AI backbone where technology allows us to reduce biases and inefficiency in the system as far as possible. And that is the approach that we are taking.
So technology, technological services, biodiversity services and environmental services are key aspects of diversification and we have proven that we are one of the only country that has been able to monetize its forests carbon credit more than a billion US dollars so far. And every year today we are having more and more interest from the aviation sector in our carbon credit. We're now advancing that.
We've created the global biodiversity alliance. We now have almost 90 countries and international organization as members of that alliance. We are hoping that Trindad and Tobago will also join that alliance uh very soon.
So diversification must take the future into consideration. We can't we can't only say we're diversifying in agriculture, but you're diversifying in the food ecosystem. That is why as part of what we're doing in agriculture, we are building a regional food hub all to international and US certification.
But we did not go the long route. What we did, we brought in the best in the business, Bloomberg grains. We said your job is to give us a certified facility and then to attach your brand to the facility to help us to take our product regionally and extra regionally.
So we have to think about agriculture not in the traditional way but agriculture as an input to the food ecosystem that has enormous financial gains. Then we have of course investment in infrastructure and human capital. Physical connectivity is important but it's not just about building roads.
It is what the investment allows us to do. And investment in infrastructure is focused on economic expansion, growth orientation and value creation. So we are building roads, interconnecting the country but opening up hundreds of thousands of new acreage of land for housing, agriculture, manufacturing and industrial development.
So the infrastructure is growth oriented. We are also building the infrastructure to connect the Guyana shield so seamlessly from French Guyana, Surinam, Guyana, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia that grand infrastructure that is being built up. The most important investment in all of this is a deep water port that allow all of the products from northern Brazil to get to the Atlantic.
And I'll show you how Guyana is strategically positioned to do this. So, let me give you an example of that. There are modular power plants, LNG power plants in the state of Rhima.
As we speak, they move LNG for,00 kilometers to get to those power plants and are still able to sell power below the global average and make money. They are ready to move LNG from Guyana from Georgetown to the same facility at half the distance. No one looked at this possibility from Trinidad and Tobago.
But just imagine if you had one storage facility invested in in Guyana for LG and you were supplying those modular plants hundreds of megawws of power. You had a market share for the next 30 years. Re-engineering our thought process.
All it took was to take the same investment in the storage facility into Guyana, have the redundancy and then the connectivity to Brazil. We are doing that and that is a area of possibility. That is a area of lowhanging fruit that is there.
So that's an example. So our physical connectivity. So we built a road for example and we started to open up the intermediate savylvanas.
Today by next two weeks you will see we will export for the first time soya beans to Barbados. [applause] We are now partnering with Dr India and others to have largecale tropical fruits production. We started the building out of a largecale coffee industry and cocoa industry all with strategic partners.
You already have a brand. Look at cacao brand that you have in Trinidad. You're you're rated anywhere you go.
But how are we building that brand? How are you investing to upscale that brand? How are you investing in the genetics to maintain the brand?
Where have we identified as a new area for development to take this brand forward? It is reorienting the entire system. You see, one of the problems in the region is that we have not created enough systemic opportunities.
So regardless of what happens politically, there are some systemic things that are governed by institutions, not bureaucracy. We cannot be inwardlooking. The world is changing.
Every country is looking at interests and then the region's interests. We can't come and say we want to manage the gas plant which is an opportunity you'll hear about soon. But then you can't bring two containers of lime into Trindad and Tobago.
It doesn't work. Let us be honest. It cannot work.
And we must end this nonsense now. It is complete nonsense. It is mindblowing that we can't sit in a room together as government and private sector and fix these problems.
So let's not talk about partnership and talk about coming together if we can't fix these problems. If we care about partnership, we care about building consortiums. We care about building a joint and I can tell you that is the best way forward.
A joint economic front between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, then we must care about fixing the problem. and let's get in that room, lock ourselves up for 72 hours and fix the darn problem and come out the room. You don't need a fancy vent.
We just need to be locked in a room for 72 hours and fix the problem. One of the things with term limit, it allows you to be impatient for results. It allows you to be impatient for results.
We have to fix this problem. We have to fix our borders. We are trying.
I mean, I don't know how many of you went back recently, but many of you call me and say, "Thank you. " because I have a dashboard and I can tell you every single day how many people came through immigration, the average time it took to clear them, the average time it took to of each officer to clear them. So I know where the effic inefficiency is.
We can tell you and we have set built-in systems on how much time it should take. We have to hold ourselves to results. So when gy investors come to Trindad, they must come back and say to the government, what the hell you guys are doing?
Look how easy it was. And when Trindad and Tobago investment come to Ghana, the good things, you can't tell me in this day and age that I can go for a in transit flight and we want to build Caribbean Airlines. We want Caribbean Airlines to have the massive market share.
But tell me this, you go to Qatar or anywhere. You're in transit passenger. You come out, you go through a specific door and you wait to be connected to your next flight.
You're coming from Guyana. You clear the security. You're in transiting to the next country.
You get to Trinidad and Tobago. You have to walk, go back through the entire security, go through back immigration, come back through an entire system. What message that tells and that is not an iata problem or that is not anything with because we have found out that is just somebody believed that they're too powerful to do what is right for the country and for relationship.
We had to fix these things. Look at Anson McCall. Excellent.
They came. They're investing in a massive mall in Guyana. Beautiful facility.
And I said to them, let's fix getting Gy agroprocessing product throughout the region. And today I'm very pleased. Within weeks, less than two weeks, three weeks, we had containers moving from Guyana through their distribution system.
because we are willing to fix it and we cannot fix it by blaming people. We can't hide under the bureaucracy that is not results orientation. So, and I'm saying we all of us this is not Trind and Tobago.
Trindad and Tobago and Guyana and all of the region. Imagine if we can sell ecoourism and your the beautiful beaches of Trindad and Tobago. Tobago uh the the beaches there uh with our ecoourism.
Imagine. But imagine someone can coming to Trindad and Tobago and then move as a local flight to Guyana seamlessly. Technology allows us to have strong system that is secure.
We have this if we are talking about partnership in the future. This must be on the table. How how we did it for cricket world cup.
If that was a pilot, if cricket world cup was a pilot and we say the pilot was successful. I didn't see any terrorists moving through any water. We didn't have any explosion.
It is will comes down to political will. We are to fix it. So we are targeting agriculture in a major way.
Sawyer uh e everything. Um so and what we have done is that we have uh give all the fiscal incentives zero corporate tax on everything with agro processing everything with infrastructure equipment machinery and we we are buying the technology for the farmers we are co-investing for large scale farmers helping to put in that infrastructure so all of this we're doing to enable the agriculture sector to grow and uh this is very important for you CEOs I I would really suggest that you keep a copy of this slide. This shows you the interconnectivity that is being built before your eyes.
And this is going to be an important trade and investment route. If you see there the route and what is going to unlock all of this is a deep water port and the road that we are building. If you see here right now a 40ft container going through the Amazon River, the time it take and that can go as much as a month during the dry season, $2,700 US, half the price.
So all of that production from northern Brazil coming in and everything going out. So this any serious CEO must be looking at this slide and how you can capitalize on these future investments, these current investments that are being made for the future. This is the road now.
This is in the forest. This is one section of the road is already completed that is being built out. That give you a visual as to which are the paved sections now and that's over 12 kilometers of pave sections section already completed.
We have about 4 400 334 uh more kilometers to be paved to be connected to Rorima. Uh and of course you know 30% of all the food come from northern Brazil. All the food that Brazil produces come from northern Brazil.
So imagine what this is going to unlock. And then looking at the bridge across the quarantine river connecting to Surinam and then all the way up to French Guyana. So this gives you an understanding as to some of the investments uh that we are making and the gas to energy project.
This is the forest. So we have gas to energy at Wales. there are going to be enormous opportunity uh for light manufacturers, industrial development here.
Uh I would say I hope that the chambers here and the private sector in Guyana can have an uh exploration as to how we build partnership and build consortium uh to make use of this industrial site that we're building out here to produce uh a whole different scale of of products. Uh the cost of energy will come down by half. Right now we're looking at glass, cement, steel.
We're also looking at a the digital uh opportunities. We're looking at a data center to serve the entire region and globally as the forest phase, the forest testing phase because in gas energy too data centers we want to position Guyana as a data center hub of the world. Uh so technologies and innovation is going to be a big part of that computing.
So that is part of the strategy in Wales one. We're looking to test that and to prove to investors that we are uh a destination for investment in in this area. So this this project is already on the way.
Then of course the petrochemical and NGL monetization uh the opportunities there um at Wales. But of course the opportunities are going to be for the second uh gas pipeline that will come on shore in uh in uh in Barbese and that of course would unlock opportunity. We have boxite reserve as you know 1.
2 billion tons of boxite reserve. We have uh we have proven goal already. uh uh proven gold is what 20 million ounces 20 million ounces of gold proven reserve and we have two large scale operators already working there and all the other minerals that we have.
So can you imagine with all the years of gold in Guyana, we have investors from Canada and all over the world and Trinidad and Tobago could not have built one consortium to invest in one gold mine in Guyana. Why? why you couldn't bring together 300 businesses in Trinidad with 1 million US each to invest in an opportunity like that.
We have to ask ourselves, are we better off fighting alone or fighting together? And in this region, the time is now for us to re-imagine our business structures. Consortiums and partnerships are what the future require because the future requires scale.
The future requires diversification of risk and that is what partnership and consortium allows us to do. So the regional uh energy corridor so we have uh the first power plant uh 300 megawatt. We are now examining the second power plant another two 250 another 300 megawws that's 600 megawatts and then in Barbies large scale power to be interconnected to northern Brazil and interconnected to Surinam.
So that is the discussions that we are having uh now because we want to be a net energy exporter positioning Guyana as a net exporter of energy to the Caribbean and South America. So that is the entire Burbies expansion uh that will take place um you know and we hope that that gas uh will come online before 2030. Then we also have the green shift uh solar and storage the capacity surge and integrating uh the green opportunities.
We know that we have 7,000 megawatt potential uh in terms of hydro power and other form of renewable energy that is already proven uh uh opportunities that exist uh in Guyana. Monetizing the grid of course we are now moving to modernizing the entire grid complete smart grid network. So the entire grid is being rebuilt across the country.
uh we have we're trying to build 40,000 new houses in the next four years. So just imagine that coming on stream. So the the the work on the grid is going to be critical in in achieving the vision.
Then the I wanted to to show you this actually look at the wealth fund uh of Norway, Qatar, Trindad and Tobago and Guyana. And what I did is to show the size of the wealth fund a different time and what the countries did. So Qatar the Norway the vast majority of funds were invested in international securities with the interest or used to finance the budget.
In Qatar, the funds were used for strategic global acquisitions and give some examples. Domestic human capital development and logistics and tourism Trinidad and Tobago, the heritage and stabilization fund was designed to stabilize short-term budget shortfalls rather than to drive structural transformation. And in Guyana, the natural resource fund aims to future proof the country by investing in physical infrastructure, strengthening human capital through world-class healthcare, education, and social services.
Now, what [clears throat] is important is to see how the fund per capita is related to GDP per capita. And there's a reason I chose you know the population of Qatar like citizens and then the general population. So to give this give you an idea as to how you build prosperity and how you utilize the money to build prosperity.
This is a sectoral distribution of credit to the private sector [clears throat] in Guyana and in Trinidad and Tobago. One interesting line there uh is agriculture. You will see and that is because of Republic Bank presence uh the regional presence and the investment that was set aside for agriculture uh regionally.
I think uh who's there? Stephen, you not long no longer with Republic Bank, but who is from Republic Bank? I know all these guys.
You know what what what is you you know the the uh the allocation to Guyana now on agriculture? Yeah. But I give you example.
We now have a dairy farm $30 million US. the Sawyer uh project is tens of millions of US dollars. So I think the the fund that was set aside a lot of a lot of it went to uh large scale opportunities in Guyana.
So the partnership and the strategic framework is merging uh maturity with emergence and here is where I go through some of the areas that we can look at how we create this partnership and this flagship uh the synergistic partnership leveraging your maturity with Ghana's infrastructure energy intensive manufacturing uh petrochemical synergy digital and AI refining and monetization. So uh when when you look at the reality of energy costs in Trinidad and Tobago and the policy agenda of where that will be in the future, it tells the manufacturers that you need maybe to invest a bit in other markets to mitigate the risk and also open up new opportunities. So [clears throat] those things must be taken into consideration in building out the partnership.
Now the complexitydriven diversification, the backward linkages which is the demand uh the forward linkages and productive knowledge. Now this is an important area for us to discuss. How do we leverage productive knowledge?
Now I say to people who always use Qatar and UAE as examples to remember one one fact. Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia they [clears throat] are surrounded by the largest labor market. India, Bangladesh, China, the Philippines all hour hour, two hours away.
So they can get labor supply in numbers. So a taxi driver there might still be working $800 US per month. Just compare that to what happens here and in Guyana.
So the productive knowledge space technology, how can we bring together all our indigenous technology companies in the region? Let us bring them together at one forum and say to them, how do we develop a regional product? How do we leverage what you guys are doing to build out a technological landscape that support regional development that is sovereign to the region very important that is sovereign to the region and that is the type of conversation and if Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago can start that conversation and present a model then can you imagine the impact the non- oil pillar [clears throat] and we are We're looking at going beyond uh what people may believe is our capacity.
We're looking at uh ship the opportunities in the maritime sector. That is why we have created a ministry uh of aviation, maritime and public utilities because we want aviation and maritime to be separate uh pillars of the economy and that is important for us to have them being a part of the growth creation and economic expansion. So how do we coordinate our efforts in building out a shipyard ship building opportunity small ships?
How do we leverage the energy for this? Now let us not think that this is beyond us. Thank you.
Let us not think this is beyond us. Let us start the conversation and then it leads to what would make it work. What are the incentives that will make it work?
What are the global partnership that would allow it to work? And that is future proofing our economies. That is building the advanced industries into what we want to do here in the region.
The we must not be afraid of complex problems or complex industries. The time has come for us to leverage our uh knowledge, buy knowledge where it's necessary and address complex opportunities. And this is the uh ship building opportunity backward, forward and elite.
We know you're doing you will be doing some exploration. We have a lot more FPSOs to come on board. How do we leverage those opportunity?
Why can't we bring everybody in the room, look at the entire liquidity in the system, all the pension funds in the system and see how we leverage that money to make more money and create great opportunities for the region. So I'm just giving some examples. I know I said it'll be a short presentation.
This is going on and on. This guy don't know when to stop. Uh the integrated supply chain.
So we want to work on building out an integrated supply chain uh that will support uh the the the food ecosystem, the agrocessing ecosystem and then uh the new regional flag. It is not too late to turn the ship and to fly on the new flag of strengthened partnership. So these are some of the thoughts uh that I want to share.
Um, and now I'll get started to my more structured comment uh uh comments. I'll now I'll now start my speech. So, um, I'm sorry that uh the introduction took so long.
Uh, but what can you do? Can you can you hold this for me, please? Thank you.
The body just needed to see the water. You know, the body just needed to see the water and it's healed. All right.
There is you see there it is it was to say thank you. No no no actually there are a lot of things before thank you. Uh so [clears throat] just quickly the policy choices we have to look to to decide whether we want more of the same or we really want a realignment of our policies.
And we have to agree that much of it is not working. uh it is not allowing us to grow beyond where we are. We have to remove ourselves from inward-looking policies and look at future proofing our businesses and our economy.
We have to look at how energy will power the future markets and allow us to position ourselves in the future market of Cuba and Haiti. We have to look at integration with DR and Brazil. build a system of collaboration versus competition.
We have to re-engineer our processes. We have to look at uh innovative opportunities, market twinning, transport reliability, very important transport reliability. We have to look at seamless borders, smooth enough to build partnership, strong enough to keep the bad actors out.
We have to stop hiding on the bureaucracy and we have to realign our laws, policies and uh deal with the issues of trade barriers. So together I believe if we are willing to make this step in a bold, creative and innovative way, we will be doing justice for the future generations and future proofing our economy. Thank you.
