Kali­fa Clyne

The Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day out­lined strate­gies to boost lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in each of its 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. These strate­gies in­clud­ed ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion projects, up­grad­ing of recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties, such as King George V Park, Port-of-Spain, re­gion­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty and do­mes­tic tourism. The plans were out­lined yes­ter­day at a fo­rum to dis­cuss the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Caribbean Lo­cal Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment project (CAR­ILED) at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain.

CAR­ILED, which is a project spon­sored by the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment is aimed at con­tribut­ing to sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth ben­e­fit­ing men and women in the Caribbean. The project has a val­ue of (Can) $23.2 mil­lion and will be im­ple­ment­ed over a six-year pe­ri­od. While de­liv­er­ing re­marks at yes­ter­day's fo­rum, Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er, Karen Mc Don­ald, not­ed that in the past few years eco­nom­ic growth in the Caribbean had slowed sub­stan­tial­ly, ow­ing large­ly to the re­ces­sion in the US econ­o­my and the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis.

She said Lo­cal Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (LED) was a means to en­able economies to re­spond to the ef­fects of glob­al­i­sa­tion, the de­mands for eco­nom­ic re­struc­tur­ing and fi­nan­cial crises. LED is a process in which lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, lo­cal gov­ern­ments, or lo­cal de­vel­op­ment agen­cies use lo­cal re­sources to cre­ate new jobs and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment in the lo­cal area or the re­gion.

Pro­gramme di­rec­tor of CAR­ILED, Naresh Singh, an­nounced that a group of four to six Caribbean coun­tries soon would be se­lect­ed for the ini­tial fo­cus of the project. In his ad­dress, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Rudri­nath In­dars­ingh, said there was a thrust cur­rent­ly to fo­cus on small and mi­cro en­ter­prise de­vel­op­ment.

"While T&T has moved away from a plan­ta­tion econ­o­my there has been a con­tin­u­a­tion of de­bate re­lat­ing to trans­for­ma­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my," In­dars­ingh said. He said the op­por­tu­ni­ty that could be pro­vid­ed by CAR­ILED pro­vid­ed the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to be­come lead­ers in that di­rec­tion. "T&T must take a lead­er­ship role in the re­gion in re­gards to trans­form­ing economies," he said.

He said pro­mot­ing lo­cal de­vel­op­ment and strate­gic plan­ning would go a long way to im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing for the poor in T&T. "Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties must lead the charge by iden­ti­fy­ing key units to en­sure that lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment takes pri­or­i­ty," In­dars­ingh said.