GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Massy Group has made a size­able in­vest­ment in the lo­cal econ­o­my, with close to $100 mil­lion pumped in­to its new­ly es­tab­lished Massy Stores at Brent­wood.

And from con­cep­tion to ac­qui­si­tion to de­sign and to fruition, Massy Brent­wood took 11 years.

This lo­ca­tion rep­re­sents Massy’s 23rd store in Trinidad and its 61st in the Caribbean.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, about 500 peo­ple were em­ployed dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase and close to 100 em­ploy­ees sup­port the op­er­a­tion, said Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon at yes­ter­day’s open­ing.

She al­so not­ed that the in­vest­ment by Massy in the Cen­tral area is strate­gic, as the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough has long es­tab­lished it­self as an ide­al lo­ca­tion for busi­ness and liv­ing; with its rich di­verse cul­ture, op­por­tu­ni­ty for com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and its cen­tral lo­ca­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Gopee-Scoon, the vast po­ten­tial of the area is demon­strat­ed in the busi­ness plat­forms cre­at­ed through the es­tab­lish­ment of the Chase Vil­lage In­dus­tri­al Park, Bil­jah In­dus­tri­al Park, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment and Fac­to­ry Road In­dus­tri­al Park.

Cu­mu­la­tive­ly these parks house 71 busi­ness­es and em­ploy hun­dreds.

Re­gard­ing the grow­ing con­cern about in­creas­ing food prices, Gopee-Scoon said while the Gov­ern­ment can­not change these ex­ter­nal fac­tors which are be­yond its con­trol, it has been work­ing proac­tive­ly to mon­i­tor and ad­dress ris­ing food prices to bring some re­lief.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter ad­vised that giv­en the high food prices, it is crit­i­cal for whole­salers and re­tail­ers to main­tain tight prof­it mar­gins, un­der­stand­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by con­sumers.

“Massy and oth­ers have al­ways demon­strat­ed this through its of­fer­ing of spe­cials to al­low price sav­ings for our cit­i­zens. This is now even more nec­es­sary at this time.

“The Gov­ern­ment is not dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al­i­ty that house­holds are feel­ing the pinch and that ris­ing prices on both food and non-food items are putting the pres­sure on house­hold bud­gets but the re­sponse has to be a col­lec­tive one,” Gopee-Scoon added.

Rox­anne de Fre­itas, CEO, Massy Stores, ac­knowl­edged that the world is fac­ing tremen­dous sup­ply chain and in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure. She al­so ad­vised shop­pers that plan­ning meals can as­sist in man­ag­ing their gro­cery bills.