The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ned­co) hand­ed grants to 117 Mi­cro and Small Busi­ness (MSB) op­er­a­tors yes­ter­day at the Trinidad Hilton.

NED­CO chair­man Clar­ry Benn hailed the re­silience shown by some of the ap­pli­cants of the grant, as he not­ed he was touched by sev­er­al of the sto­ries be­hind var­i­ous ap­pli­cants.

He said, “Our grant re­cip­i­ents rep­re­sent a di­verse group of en­tre­pre­neurs. Among them, we have in­di­vid­u­als who have over­come in­cred­i­ble chal­lenges. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by the sto­ries of a para­plegic re­cip­i­ent and a can­cer sur­vivor, both of whom have demon­strat­ed ex­tra­or­di­nary courage and re­silience. We al­so recog­nise the ef­forts of re­trenched work­ers and job seek­ers who have turned to en­tre­pre­neur­ship as a means of cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves and oth­ers. Your de­ter­mi­na­tion to forge new paths is tru­ly in­spir­ing.”

The re­cip­i­ents of the grant will re­ceive train­ing, fol­lowed by tai­lored busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry ses­sions and on­go­ing men­tor­ship sup­port from NED­CO.

“Over re­cent weeks, they have dili­gent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with their as­signed busi­ness coach­es to re­fine strate­gies, as­sess mar­ket de­mands, and so­lid­i­fy their plans for suc­cess. Their jour­ney ex­em­pli­fies re­silience and en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it. Look­ing ahead, we ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pate sup­port­ing more en­tre­pre­neurs through both the fast and stan­dard tracks of the MSB grant pro­gramme These tracks will con­tin­ue to of­fer per­son­alised as­sis­tance, fos­ter­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of busi­ness lead­ers and con­tribut­ing to the vi­brant eco­nom­ic land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Benn.

Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings said the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue to in­vest in en­tre­pre­neur­ship in the coun­try as he as­sured the grant would re­ceive sim­i­lar sup­port in fis­cal 2024/2025.

“In fis­cal year 2024, we are com­mit­ting $20 mil­lion to this ini­tia­tive, with a sim­i­lar fig­ure pro­ject­ed for fis­cal 2025. This al­lo­ca­tion un­der­scores our gov­ern­ment’s un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es (MSEs), which are the back­bone of our econ­o­my,” said Cum­mings.

“Since the launch of this ini­tia­tive on Jan­u­ary 30, 2024 we’ve wit­nessed an un­prece­dent­ed re­sponse. A stag­ger­ing 3,378 ap­pli­ca­tions have poured in, each rep­re­sent­ing a spark of in­no­va­tion, a dream of pros­per­i­ty and a com­mit­ment to our na­tion’s growth. To­day, we cel­e­brate all 117 of these vi­sion­ar­ies, five of whom are from our sis­ter isle To­ba­go,” the min­is­ter said.

He said the grant is one piece of a larg­er pic­ture of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. He ex­plained he was es­pe­cial­ly heart­ened by the in­volve­ment of To­ba­go ap­pli­cants, and he stressed there would be a greater show­case on their con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my.