The Gov­ern­ment’s launch of a ded­i­cat­ed SME For­eign Ex­change Win­dow through the Ex­port–Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been hailed by lo­cal busi­ness lead­ers and PNM can­di­dates as a pos­i­tive step to­ward bol­ster­ing small and medi­um‑sized en­ter­pris­es.

Richie Sookhai, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and PNM can­di­date for Ch­agua­nas East, said the new fa­cil­i­ty shows that the Stu­art Young–led ad­min­is­tra­tion is “lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple.”

In a phone in­ter­view, Sookhai ac­knowl­edged that many SMEs would need help meet­ing statu­to­ry re­quire­ments—re­call­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges dur­ing COVID‑19 re­lief ef­forts—and pledged to use his of­fice to guide busi­ness­es through the ap­pli­ca­tion process.