The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has con­grat­u­lat­ed the Gov­ern­ment and in par­tic­u­lar eTecK, In­vesTT and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, on the com­ple­tion and of­fi­cial open­ing of the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PPIE).

A state­ment is­sued from the TTMA yes­ter­day, not­ed that this de­vel­op­ment will act as a cat­a­lyst to grow the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing base of this coun­try and al­low for in­creased em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, for­eign ex­change earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty for T&T.

Pres­i­dent of the TTMA Roger Roach stat­ed, “The as­so­ci­a­tion wel­comes this newest ad­di­tion to the eTecK’s list­ing as we con­tin­ue to do our part to grow the con­tri­bu­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to the GDP of T&T.

“The avail­abil­i­ty of this new, state-of-the-art space, will fa­cil­i­tate or­gan­i­sa­tions who are seek­ing to in­vest, up­grade or ex­pand in­to new tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven, best-in-class op­er­a­tions in light man­u­fac­tur­ing, ware­hous­ing, lo­gis­tics and oth­er re­lat­ed growth in­dus­tries.”

He added that these ini­tia­tives will al­so au­gur well for bol­ster­ing the eco­nom­ic land­scape of T&T and aid in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion process.

“The new in­dus­tri­al park po­si­tions Trinidad as a coun­try ripe for in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment, with com­pa­nies glob­al­ly tak­ing note. In fact, in Oc­to­ber last year, a del­e­ga­tion of ten rep­re­sen­ta­tives from sev­en Chi­nese firms vis­it­ed e TecK’s Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

“At that time, com­mit­ments were giv­en for some of these com­pa­nies to take up space on the park, with one com­pa­ny al­ready man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port­ing lug­gage to North Amer­i­ca,” Roach said.

He added that the TTMA was look­ing for­ward to the fur­ther ex­pan­sion of the list of eTecK’s parks to be de­vel­oped such as the Fac­to­ry Road area in cen­tral and Dow Vil­lage for which en­gi­neer­ing de­signs have start­ed as he al­so called on those in au­thor­i­ty to re­view with the in­ten­tion of ex­pan­sion of the Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment e TecK Park.

He said the TTMA has sev­er­al mem­bers ex­press­ing their de­sire for more space to con­sol­i­date and ex­pand their op­er­a­tions.

“TTMA is in sup­port of all pro­gres­sive and ac­tion­able ini­tia­tives to en­cour­age eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my of T&T and will con­tin­ue to work with all stake­hold­ers in this re­gard,” Roach added.