Two ten­ants have al­ready been con­firmed for the Moru­ga Agro-Pro­cess­ing and Light In­dus­tri­al Park and two more have been is­sued let­ters of of­fer, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon has an­nounced.

Gopee-Scoon made the state­ment as she de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s post-bud­get we­bi­nar yes­ter­day.

“For the first time in his­to­ry a very proud gov­ern­ment has re­al­ly com­mit­ted to the ex­pan­sion of this sec­tor (agri­cul­ture), to the ex­pan­sion of the food sup­ply and this is to be achieved in five years and this has been placed at the top of our na­tion­al pol­i­cy agen­da,” Gopee-Scoon said.

“So that in or­der to en­hance the per­cep­tion of agri­cul­ture and con­tin­ue to at­tract the best and bright­est to the sec­tor and re­alise this new vi­sion, the Gov­ern­ment spoke to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­ture and Biotech­nol­o­gy,in­creas­ing the use of tech­nol­o­gy in agri­cul­ture that is the on­ly way you will be able to speak to scale and uni­for­mi­ty of prod­uct and so on and of course al­so in in­vest­ing in pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture to max­i­mize yields,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said the sec­tor al­ready ben­e­fits from be­ing the on­ly one that is en­tire­ly tax free.

“And of course I want to add here that and this is from the eTecK (Evolv­ing Tec­knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed) stand point at the Min­istry of Trade we com­plet­ed the Moru­ga Agro-pro­cess­ing and Light In­dus­tri­al Park, we al­ready have two ten­ants, they’ve signed up al­ready of course we have al­so is­sued let­ters of of­fer I think to an­oth­er two and of course this is about nu­mer­ous agro-pro­cess­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al ar­eas,” she said.

The Moru­ga Agro-pro­cess­ing and Light In­dus­tri­al Park was of­fi­cial­ly launched on Ju­ly 14 by Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley.

The open­ing cer­e­mo­ny was held in one of the new­ly built fac­to­ry shells at the 18 acre site.

Gopee-Scoon said while the pub­lic ex­pect­ed a very puni­tive fis­cal pack­age in­stead the bud­get pre­sent­ed very im­por­tant and nec­es­sary steps aimed at re­set­ting the econ­o­my for growth and in­no­va­tion.

She said three ma­jor themes flowed through the bud­get state­ment the pro­vi­sion of greater pri­vate sec­tor op­por­tu­ni­ties, the cre­ation of a more ro­bust and di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my, and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cies in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“These three pil­lars are not meant to sim­ply help the coun­try weath­er the de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but al­so trans­form the econ­o­my and be pre­pared for a more open, com­pet­i­tive world in the near fu­ture,” she said.

Pres­i­dent of AM­CHAM T&T Pa­tri­cia Ghany said the theme for the post bud­get Re­view was: “Re­cov­ery to Trans­for­ma­tion”

“We knew this bud­get wasn’t go­ing to be the quick fix to all our prob­lems. We un­der­stood that the Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing a her­culean task to right this ship and re­turn T&T to a path of growth and pros­per­i­ty. And we knew our phys­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sur­vival meant hav­ing to put aside our dif­fer­ences and start the process of work­ing to­geth­er,” Ghany said.

She said she was pleased with the di­rec­tion tak­en by the gov­ern­ment in the bud­get.

“The in­cen­tives in the bud­get through grants for start-up busi­ness­es, and tax cred­its to busi­ness­es to in­vest in tech start-ups or new tech busi­ness­es will act as a vi­able source for rev­enue, open the job mar­ket to many young pro­fes­sion­als, and com­mit our na­tion’s fu­ture to a dig­i­tal­ly-based econ­o­my where the op­por­tu­ni­ties seem end­less. These are all great ini­tia­tives we have cham­pi­oned, and we are proud to see the gov­ern­ment move in this di­rec­tion,” she said.