Ali­cia Llanos

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Pe­ter Tay­lor is call­ing on all re­gion­al con­sumers and traders of Cari­com prod­ucts to ad­here to first-class pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and ser­vice to be a com­pet­i­tive force in the glob­al and re­gion­al mar­kets.

Tay­lor was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the sec­ond Work­shop on Mod­el Build­ing and Da­ta Analy­sis: Pro­mo­tion of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion in the Caribbean Project. The work­shop was host­ed by the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs' Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion and Con­sumers In­ter­na­tion­al at the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. It was at­tend­ed by busi­ness peo­ple from Bar­ba­dos, T&T and Ja­maica. Tay­lor said con­sumers must de­mand and ex­pect top val­ue for mon­ey in or­der to mo­ti­vate the sup­pli­er and to fos­ter the dri­ve to ex­pand busi­ness. He said Cari­com na­tions pro­duced prod­ucts which were sta­ples on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, us­ing the ex­am­ples of T&T's An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters and Ja­maica's Blue Moun­tain Cof­fee.

He en­cour­aged sup­pli­ers and traders to con­tin­ue to im­prove and fur­ther mar­ket their prod­uct, not on­ly to sat­is­fy de­mand­ing con­sumers, but to hold their own on the com­pet­i­tive re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. He said the min­istry was cur­rent­ly re­vis­ing and draft­ing new con­sumer and trad­er leg­is­la­tion, which was be­ing re­viewed by a pre-cab­i­net sub com­mit­tee. He said the leg­is­la­tion was in­tend­ed to strength­en the law to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive pro­tec­tion for both con­sumers and traders. When asked whether or not he thought the Ude­cott/Hart scan­dal would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect T&T's econ­o­my, es­pe­cial­ly with for­eign in­vestors, he said he be­lieved that the econ­o­my would not be af­fect­ed, adding, "our econ­o­my is a very re­silient one."