Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has giv­en the T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) the com­mit­ment that her min­istry will fa­cil­i­tate on go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion to en­sure the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor.

She and se­nior of­fi­cials of the min­istry met pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) and ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers at her Nicholas Tow­er of­fice in Port-of-Spain to dis­cuss key is­sues in the lo­cal scrap met­al iIn­dus­try.

Gopee-Scoon re­it­er­at­ed the eco­nom­ic im­por­tance of the scrap met­al in­dus­try to T&T and com­mend­ed Fer­gu­son on his stew­ard­ship of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, both or­gan­i­sa­tions agreed on a way for­ward for the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try.

The glob­al scrap met­al in­dus­try has been grow­ing at a rapid rate over the past decade.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the in­dus­try con­tributes over US $65 bil­lion to glob­al GDP. The growth and im­pact of this In­dus­try glob­al­ly has al­so been re­flect­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly as the in­dus­try is now an im­por­tant con­trib­u­tor to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pro­vid­ed by T&T’s Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), scrap met­al ex­ports es­ca­lat­ed from ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT $69 mil­lion in 2009 to an es­ti­mat­ed TT$ 216 mil­lionn in 2018, reg­is­ter­ing an in­crease of over 213 per cent over a 10-year pe­ri­od.