GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said this coun­try is ex­pect­ed to rake in bil­lions in for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) in the en­er­gy sec­tor in the next three years.

He made the re­marks at the open­ing of the head of­fice of the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Au­thor­i­ty (SEZA) which took place in St Clair yes­ter­day.

As he shot back at de­trac­tors who con­tin­ue to crit­i­cise that T&T is not earn­ing any FDI in the en­er­gy sec­tor, the PM out­lined that from 2016 to 2025, un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion it at­tract­ed US$8.1 bil­lion for­eign in­vest­ment di­rect­ly in­to T&T’s in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“That’s $56.7 bil­lion (TT). That is some­thing that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is not spread out there ... So when you hear about there’s no FID, there’s been no FID, quite the con­trary.

“In ad­di­tion to what we’ve done in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, we have en­sured US$8.1 bil­lion and I can tell you that, again, as a re­sult of the work that we’ve put in place, you can ex­pect be­tween now and 2028, in ad­di­tion to that fig­ure, the FDI of US$9.3 bil­lion which is $65 bil­lion in the next three years in the en­er­gy sec­tor,” Young out­lined.

Young said this “does not in­clude the project that you see every­body fo­cus­ing on and scream­ing about” as he made like­ly ref­er­ence the now failed Drag­on gas deal.

Re­it­er­at­ing that the ex­pect­ed FDI would be sig­nif­i­cant, the PM said this mon­ey would be use not on­ly to keep T&T’s ex­pen­di­ture lev­els where they are, but al­so to ex­pand in­to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

As he spoke fur­ther on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,Young said “with di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, it is not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive.”

“So there is no need to say, well, we need to di­ver­si­fy away from hy­dro­car­bons, away from oil and gas and that we on­ly need to fo­cus on one sec­tor, on man­u­fac­tur­ing or non-oil and gas sec­tor. At this stage of our de­vel­op­ment in T&T, we can more than walk, chew gum, kick a ball, catch a ball at the same time,” Young said as he laud­ed the SEZA, say­ing it marked T&T’s en­try in­to the huge glob­al mar­ket.

He added this sig­nalled that T&T is open for busi­ness.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who al­so spoke said the SEZ (Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones) regime was but one tool in gov­ern­ment’s ar­se­nal to nav­i­gate an in­creas­ing­ly un­pre­dictable eco­nom­ic cli­mate, and to chart a course for long-term growth and de­vel­op­ment.

She added small, medi­um and large firms can ben­e­fit from the SEZ regime, once they meet the re­quired cri­te­ria.

“We hope to at­tract firms in a wide range of sec­tors, in­clud­ing those in tra­di­tion­al ones like man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture and agro pro­cess­ing, mar­itime ser­vices, cre­ative in­dus­tries, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, and lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion, as well as non-tra­di­tion­al ar­eas like, avi­a­tion ser­vices, in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, med­ical tourism ser­vices, and re­new­able en­er­gy,” Gopee-Scoon said.

The min­is­ter fur­ther not­ed that to date, the SEZ Au­thor­i­ty has is­sued two sin­gle zone en­ter­prise li­cences to firms in­volved in busi­ness process out­sourc­ing (BPOs).

She added two BPOs, which are in­volved in the health and fi­nan­cial ser­vices, rep­re­sent a to­tal in­vest­ment of over TT$60 mil­lion and will re­sult in over 800 jobs in the up­com­ing years.

One of them, Carenet Health, of­fi­cial­ly opened just two days ago.

The min­is­ter said there was al­so a pipeline of 18 ap­pli­ca­tions be­ing processed that would fur­ther di­ver­si­fy the SEZ’s port­fo­lio and bring much need­ed in­vest­ment and jobs in­to the coun­try.