PORT OF SPAIN: No man or business is an island in today’s interconnected and globalised world, said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

The Prime Minister pointed out that governments and private sectors could no longer operate businesses in the usual mode but should collaborate to tackle the challenges posed by environmental degradation.

Najib, who was speaking at the Commonwealth Business Forum here on Thursday, noted that the private sector had the technologies as well as the abilities to develop products and services that addressed global challenges.

Governments, meanwhile, should ensure that countries’ economic growth strategies were environmentally sustainable.

“We should bequeath to our future generations a world that is environmentally sound,” he added.

Najib cited, as an example, Malaysia’s own Green Technology policy that covered energy, environment, economy and social policies.

“The policy is to ensure all Malaysians enjoy an improved quality of life, by ensuring the objectives of national development policies continue to be balanced with environmental consideration.”

Najib, who is in the capital city of Trinidad and Tobago to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) conference, was invited by the Commonwealth Business Council to share his thoughts on “New Approaches to Sustainable Development: The Way Forward” at the forum.

He also stressed that efforts to address climate change should be consistent with keeping global trade and investment open and free without raising new barriers to trade and investment.

He said the Commonwealth countries represented an important component in Malaysia’s global trade, amounting to RM159.6bil or 22.7% of the country’s total trade in the first nine months of this year.

Malaysian companies were in almost all 53 member countries and this provided an opportunity for business collaboration, he added.

The Prime Minister later attended a dinner hosted by Sunway Construction (Caribbean), a subsidiary of the Sunway Group which is developing its first project in the Port of Spain - a 23-storey building for the republic’s Legal Ministry.

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