Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie says the T&T econ­o­my has kicked in­to "growth mode" and is turn­ing around from the de­cline record­ed in 2012.Tewarie de­liv­ered the good eco­nom­ic news yes­ter­day as he turned the sod for con­struc­tion of JT Al­lum and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed's $500 mil­lion C3 Cen­tre at Bre­mar Road, Corinth, San Fer­nan­do. The shop­ping and en­ter­tain­ment fa­cil­i­ty will be an­chored by ma­jor ten­ants, JTA Su­per­mar­ket and Movi­etowne.

Christo­pher Mack, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of JT Al­lum, said the C3 Cen­tre will be a "state of the art, world class fa­cil­i­ty when com­plet­ed in 2015." He said the com­plex, which will sit on 600,000 square feet of build­ing space and on 20 acres of land, "will de­liv­er a unique shop­ping and en­ter­tain­ment ex­pe­ri­ence to the south­land."Tewarie agreed and said the ma­jor pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment was a wel­come sig­nal of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my.

"T&T has turned the cor­ner and the econ­o­my has moved from de­cline to growth. The con­struc­tion sec­tor is pick­ing up, the non-en­er­gy sec­tors are be­com­ing buoy­ant, ser­vices are grow­ing and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, slow­ly but sure­ly is hap­pen­ing," he said.Tewarie said in 2012 the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced "mod­est growth"and growth has been fore­cast to be 2.5 per cent for this year.

How­ev­er, he told re­porters af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny: "We are not at the point where we can get the kind of growth num­bers of 2008 but we have cer­tain­ly moved out of de­cline in­to growth."He said some chal­lenges are still be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced lo­cal­ly and cit­ed the shut down of the BG and BpTT plants for sched­uled main­te­nance, as one of them.

"Ba­si­cal­ly when they shut their plants down for main­te­nance it has an im­pact on the en­er­gy con­tri­bu­tion to GDP and be­cause that is the biggest con­trib­u­tor–that is to say en­er­gy con­tri­bu­tion–to GDP. It does af­fect the growth num­ber," he said.He has­tened to add that growth is be­ing pro­pelled by strides in the non-en­er­gy and con­struc­tion sec­tors.

Tewarie al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's man­age­ment of the coun­try and her han­dling of the Jack Warn­er is­sue."The ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter is of­fer­ing very, very ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship in the man­age­ment of this sit­u­a­tion and I would like to do my best to sup­port her. The coun­try is big­ger than any in­di­vid­ual or group in the coun­try. The na­tion is big­ger than any sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion or any in­di­vid­ual the coun­try," he said.

Tewarie said un­em­ploy­ment for 2013 is es­ti­mat­ed at 5 per cent."In the con­struc­tion sec­tor, there are just over 100,000 con­struc­tion work­ers in the labour force. Most re­cent fig­ures put the un­em­ploy­ment rate in this sec­tor at 11.8 per cent. Al­though this fig­ure can fluc­tu­ate a bit dur­ing the year, this will de­cline this year as ma­jor con­struc­tion projects get un­der way," he said.

Tewarie said the C3 Cen­tre will not on­ly pro­vide em­ploy­ment dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase, but will of­fer per­ma­nent and sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment for res­i­dents in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.The min­is­ter list­ed a num­ber of con­struc­tion projects ear­marked to be­gin short­ly, in­clud­ing the sec­ond phase of the Cha­gara­mas Wa­ter­front.He said on June 7 a zi­pline fa­cil­i­ty will be opened in Cha­gara­mas and this will "in­crease the en­ter­tain­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the gen­er­al pub­lic."