Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Paula Gopee-Scoon, de­scribed the open­ing of a new Amer­i­jet Caribbean Ex­press branch in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, as fur­ther ev­i­dence that in­vestor con­fi­dence is grow­ing in the coun­try.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the new of­fice, which was at­tend­ed by US am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond, Gopee-Scoon said she is pleased the com­pa­ny has cho­sen to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions in the coun­try.

“It marks an­oth­er mile­stone for Amer­i­jet which has been here for more than 30 years and of course the gov­ern­ment is very pleased to have an­oth­er US in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it is on the ba­sis of the recog­ni­tion of long term ben­e­fits of in­vest­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Amer­i­jet In­ter­na­tion­al Air­lines, Inc. is an Amer­i­can car­go air­line head­quar­tered in Mi­a­mi, Unit­ed States.

In Jan­u­ary, In­vesTT an­nounced that Amer­i­jet had en­tered in­to a lease on the fourth floor of an of­fice build­ing lo­cat­ed on Vic­to­ria Av­enue, Port-of-Spain. That was to es­tab­lish a shared ser­vices cen­tre.

The cen­tre will pri­mar­i­ly sup­port in­ter­nal ac­counts payable/re­ceiv­able and rev­enue ac­count­ing func­tions, as well as project man­age­ment/busi­ness in­tel­li­gence func­tions of Amer­i­jet, which are present­ly pro­vid­ed out of its Mi­a­mi hub.

The in­vest­ment is ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.5M to $2M and is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate 25 jobs in the first in­stance and even­tu­al­ly ex­pand to 50 seats, which can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the fourth floor.