RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Ka­ma Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day Gov­ern­ment has signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) to restart a long-idled steel mill, a move he says will gen­er­ate an es­ti­mat­ed US$1.5 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, while cre­at­ing a mar­ket for every tonne of scrap iron and dis­card­ed tyres pro­duced in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T’s (PSOTT) “Road To Trans­for­ma­tion” meet­ing held in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day, Ma­haraj said the agree­ment was signed with an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny, rep­re­sent­ing an ini­tial US$50 mil­lion in­vest­ment that is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand to US$150 mil­lion.

He said the project would re­vive one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant in­dus­tri­al as­sets af­ter years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We have to re­open that steel mill,” Ma­haraj said, not­ing that the plant’s melt shop gives it a strate­gic ad­van­tage.

He said T&T gen­er­ates large vol­umes of scrap met­al af­ter more than a cen­tu­ry of in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion.

“They will buy every pound of scrap that we have,” he said.

The com­pa­ny will al­so pur­chase the coun­try’s dis­card­ed tyres, he added.

“Do you know we pro­duce 1.1 mil­lion dis­card­ed tyres every year? They’re buy­ing all the tyres too. So they will clean up the coun­try.”

Ma­haraj said the MOU was signed along­side agree­ments for two ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres an­nounced ear­li­er this month by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He de­scribed the re­open­ing of the steel mill as a ma­jor in­vest­ment that would strength­en the coun­try’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

“That will give us about US$1.5 bil­lion a year,” he said.

The min­is­ter said the in­vest­ment forms part of the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er strat­e­gy to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas through ex­port-led growth.

He said his min­istry has es­tab­lished spe­cif­ic ex­port and in­vest­ment tar­gets, in­clud­ing se­cur­ing US$2 bil­lion in new ex­ports with­in two years and US$5 bil­lion over five years, while at­tract­ing US$3 bil­lion in in­vest­ments with­in two years and US$9 bil­lion over five years.

Ma­haraj said the min­istry has re­placed what he de­scribed as an ad hoc ap­proach to trade pol­i­cy with week­ly strat­e­gy meet­ings in­volv­ing min­istry of­fi­cials, state agen­cies and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of PSOTT.

He said Gov­ern­ment recog­nised that eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion could not be achieved with­out the pri­vate sec­tor.

“The wealth of a na­tion is not re­al­ly its re­sources. It’s the con­fi­dence of its busi­ness peo­ple,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj urged lo­cal busi­ness­es to ex­pand in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing, say­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers re­ceive pri­or­i­ty ac­cess to for­eign ex­change for raw ma­te­ri­als, pack­ag­ing and equip­ment, while many im­ports en­ter du­ty-free.

He al­so an­nounced plans to ask Cab­i­net to give greater pref­er­ence to lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured goods in pub­lic pro­cure­ment.

“I am tak­ing a Cab­i­net note to in­struct all min­istries and all gov­ern­ment agen­cies to pri­ori­tise the pur­chase of lo­cal­ly pro­duced prod­ucts when avail­able,” he said.

Ma­haraj al­so pro­posed mea­sures to pro­tect lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers from cheap­er im­port­ed goods, say­ing Gov­ern­ment would seek to en­sure lo­cal prod­ucts are giv­en equal con­sid­er­a­tion where their prices are with­in 25 per cent of im­port­ed al­ter­na­tives.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh wel­comed the ini­tia­tive, say­ing the re­open­ing of the steel mill could cre­ate jobs, earn for­eign ex­change and help ad­dress the coun­try’s grow­ing stock­pile of scrap met­al.

“It was an ex­cel­lent idea to not on­ly gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change, but cre­ate em­ploy­ment,” Singh said.

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly re­strict­ed cop­per ex­ports be­cause of wide­spread theft and sug­gest­ed the new steel op­er­a­tion could al­so utilise re­cov­ered cop­per.

“We have a lot of idle scrap iron all over the place. In fact, when li­cences of ships are dereg­is­tered, in­clud­ing those at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, that would gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change, gen­er­ate rev­enue for the Gov­ern­ment, the Po­lice Ser­vice, and lo­cal cit­i­zens who have all this idle junk.”

Asked about sug­ges­tions that the project could align with Unit­ed States poli­cies to source steel for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es, Singh said he had no in­for­ma­tion to sup­port those claims.