Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try has an­nounced Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to trans­form the fash­ion in­dus­try, fol­low­ing the re­cent tri­umph of lo­cal de­sign­er Anya Ay­oung-Chee. Cadiz said his min­istry had met with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers of the fash­ion in­dus­try in an ef­fort to chart a way for­ward. Cadiz joined a grow­ing num­ber of pub­lic fig­ures to send con­grat­u­la­tions to T&T de­sign­er Anya Ay­oung-Chee on her suc­cess in win­ning the Project Run­way com­pe­ti­tion. Anya blazed past the com­pe­ti­tion on Thurs­day night to win both the de­sign com­pe­ti­tion and the fan favourite com­pe­ti­tion put on by the US tele­vi­sion net­work Life­time.

In a re­lease from Perth, Aus­tralia, Cadiz con­grat­u­lat­ed Ay­oung-Chee who he la­belled "a daugh­ter of our soil" on her phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess in the US-based tele­vi­sion se­ries. "This morn­ing in Aus­tralia, I re­ceived the news that our very own Anya topped the com­pe­ti­tion. As a cit­i­zen of this great land, she rep­re­sent­ed our na­tion on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage with grace, poise and cer­tain­ty," said Cadiz. He con­tin­ued: "Her col­lec­tion ti­tled To­ba­go Love was able to cap­ture the cre­ativ­i­ty, essence, beau­ty, vi­bran­cy and spir­it of the Caribbean. Anya's suc­cess sto­ry has fur­ther high­light­ed the po­ten­tial of the fash­ion in­dus­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go." Cadiz de­scribed cre­ativ­i­ty a great as­set, but lament­ed that the po­ten­tial of the fash­ion in­dus­try has yet to be ex­ploit­ed to its fullest.

"Fash­ion is a key pil­lar of our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan and this gov­ern­ment is ful­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that there is sus­tained growth and de­vel­op­ment," Cadiz said. "We are com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing a suit­able en­vi­ron­ment which will fos­ter, nur­ture and har­ness the cre­ativ­i­ty of our peo­ple to en­sure its trans­for­ma­tion in­to a boom­ing in­dus­try. We have heard the plights and con­cerns of the cre­ative sec­tor and I as­sure you that we are ad­dress­ing these con­cerns." He recog­nised the con­tri­bu­tions of Wayne Berke­ley, Pe­ter Min­shall, Clau­dia Pe­gus, Meil­ing and Heather Jones as those who had blazed the trail and laid the foun­da­tion which has iden­ti­fied and nur­tured tal­ents such as Ay­oung-Chee's.