Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon says as the Gov­ern­ment builds re­silience and ac­cel­er­ates the tran­si­tion to­wards more sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive growth, it is com­pelled to place greater at­ten­tion on small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) that scale up and har­ness rev­enues, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, in­no­va­tion, com­pet­i­tive­ness and job cre­ation.

She cit­ed that SMEs con­tribute ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28 per cent to this coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct, and ac­count for 91 per cent of all reg­is­tered busi­ness­es and em­ploy more than 200,000 peo­ple.

Speak­ing at the grad­u­a­tion for Co­hort 2 Scale Up T&T Busi­ness Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gramme which was held vir­tu­al­ly yes­ter­day, Gopee-Scoon said when SMEs are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, the econ­o­my of many coun­tries, in­clud­ing this one un­der­per­forms.

On the ben­e­fits of the pro­gramme the Trade Min­is­ter said, “The di­ver­si­ty in the Scale Up pro­files of dif­fer­ent SMEs de­mands a unique of­fer­ing tar­get­ed to each SME. Adop­tion of a one size fits all ap­proach will not work.”

On how should SMEs ought to be suc­cess­ful­ly scaled up Gopee-Scoon said her min­istry will con­tin­ue with the third co­hort of the pro­gramme which it is pre­pared to im­ple­ment as soon as pos­si­ble.

“Scale Up TT pro­vides com­pa­nies with the nec­es­sary tools, skills and mind­set to trans­form their busi­ness­es to in­crease their rev­enues, ex­ports and em­ploy­ment, as well as strength­en the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem of SMEs in T&T,” Gopee-Scoon added.

From the suc­cess sto­ries of the pro­gramme thus far, she said these busi­ness­es achieved in­creased growth, in­creased ex­ports, some en­tered new mar­kets and new jobs were cre­at­ed—all achieved over ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months from com­mence­ment.

The Trade Min­is­ter al­so ad­vised grad­u­ates to be agents of change not on­ly in their re­spec­tive busi­ness­es but with­in the var­i­ous sec­tors or in­dus­tries.

Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Nigel Ed­wards said growth-ob­sessed en­tre­pre­neurs can make a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact in a thriv­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem.

“They can em­pow­er in­di­vid­u­als, im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing, cre­ate jobs, gen­er­ate wealth, and bol­ster economies through their in­no­v­a­tive per­spec­tives,” Ed­wards said.

Ed­wards said to date there have been 25 com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Scale Up pro­gramme.

“I strong­ly be­lieve that the suc­cess of an en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem can not be bought, it must be built!” Ed­wards said.

“Be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur is not a ti­tle; it is an iden­ti­ty, and the en­tre­pre­neur­ial path is the road less trav­elled, but the des­ti­na­tion is pur­pose­ful­ly lim­it­less,” he said.