Melis­sa Doughty

Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts ex­pressed his ju­bi­la­tion over the 2012 bud­get de­liv­ered by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, Sen­a­tor Lar­ry Howai, which he said for the first time paid more than pass­ing men­tion to the min­istry. He said yes­ter­day in a post-bud­get in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian: "If you know any­thing about pol­i­tics and sports in T&T, you would know that sports has nev­er re­ceived but pass­ing men­tion. To be­come one of the pil­lars of growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the econ­o­my, and to be in a bud­get speech and have an en­tire page and a half ded­i­cat­ed to sport, shows that the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stand the im­por­tance of sport, not on­ly for na­tion­al pride and healthy lifestyles and a healthy pop­u­la­tion, but in di­ver­si­fy­ing and bring­ing rev­enue in­to this econ­o­my."

Sports tourism, Roberts said, is go­ing to be a huge thrust with­in the min­istry and he as­sured the pub­lic the fa­cil­i­ties al­lot­ted to the min­istry would be used to cre­ate jobs and the sport­ing in­dus­try. Howai an­nounced sev­er­al ini­tia­tives aimed at dri­ving sport tourism, such as the de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al-stan­dard sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, and bring­ing sports to the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties. Howai said sport "is big busi­ness and we in­tend to lever­age our re­cent suc­cess­es to make bet­ter use of ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties to host a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al events and gen­er­ate on­go­ing rev­enue." Be­sides the re­fur­bish­ment of the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in To­ba­go, which is go­ing to re­ceive up­dat­ed light­ing, drainage, elec­tri­cal in­stal­la­tion and ath­let­ic track up­grades, Howai an­nounced the con­struc­tion of a na­tion­al aquat­ic cen­tre, na­tion­al ten­nis cen­tre and na­tion­al velo­drome(built to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Howai hopes this would at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes to pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure to the coun­try's ath­letes and to de­vel­op sport tourism. Howai al­so an­nounced the con­struc­tion of three mul­ti­pur­pose sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and the up­grad­ing of 64 recre­ation grounds and 21 play parks. He al­so an­nounced the up­grad­ing of in­door fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date peo­ple liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties. He said the Min­istry of Sport and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment are work­ing on a mar­ket­ing plan to host in­ter­na­tion­al events "aimed at en­cour­ag­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sports­men and women to come to T&T par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the win­ter months to utilise the fa­cil­i­ties." Sport­ing Tourism, Roberts said, could pos­si­bly gen­er­ate $140 mil­lion to the na­tion­al econ­o­my and the min­istry ex­pects to in­crease in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors by 10,000 each year for sport tourism.