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Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Vivek Char­ran, has warned that the de­ci­sion by ANSA McAL and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) to with­draw from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) high­lights grow­ing strain be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor dur­ing a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion.Char­ran de­scribed TCL’s de­par­ture as sig­nif­i­cant, not­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al im­por­tance.

“TCL is not just a big man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in Trinidad, but re­gion­al­ly,” he not­ed.More con­cern­ing, in his view, is the ap­par­ent break­down in en­gage­ment be­tween ANSA McAL and the TTMA.

“It is a bit alarm­ing to see that talks or ne­go­ti­a­tions have bro­ken down be­tween ANSA and TTMA, be­cause ANSA has been a long­stand­ing part­ner,” he ob­served.Char­ran framed the de­vel­op­ments with­in what he de­scribed as a broad­er tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od for the econ­o­my, dri­ven large­ly by the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal chal­lenges.