Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said he is op­ti­mistic about fu­ture promis­ing part­ner­ships be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try to as­sist To­ba­go busi­ness­es.

Au­gus­tine, who spoke with re­porters af­ter a meet­ing be­tween the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce To­ba­go Di­vi­sion and Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day, said he is notic­ing more in­no­va­tion on the is­land and the goal is to fos­ter a tight bond be­tween the To­ba­go busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the state.

“We fi­nal­ly took a look at ar­eas of fur­ther part­ner­ship be­tween the THA, the peo­ple of To­ba­go, and the min­istry in Trinidad and how those part­ner­ships will work and how we can utilise the of­fer­ings of both the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance, Trade and Econ­o­my and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try to ad­vance the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in To­ba­go for growth and progress,” he said.

“For the first time in a long time, we are see­ing an uptick in busi­ness­es out­side of the dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor. For a long time in To­ba­go, we saw busi­ness as buy­ing a prod­uct some­where and re­tail­ing it here. What we try to do is push the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to bring the type of in­no­va­tion that can be ex­port­ed.”

Gopee-Scoon said com­ing out of a “spir­it­ed” meet­ing with the cham­ber and busi­ness stake­hold­ers, more needs to be done to stim­u­late growth in the sec­tor on the is­land.

“We want more busi­ness­es to grow and take ad­van­tage of the fa­cil­i­ties that are avail­able for ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, ac­cess to ex­port, for train­ing and de­vel­op­ment,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said the min­istry has as­sist­ed 40 busi­ness­es in ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, ac­cess to fi­nance, and ex­port de­vel­op­ment plans, among oth­er things. How­ev­er, she ex­pressed con­cern that not enough To­ba­go busi­ness­es are tak­ing ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“I am not see­ing To­ba­go busi­ness­es ben­e­fit­ting from some of our fi­nan­cial prod­ucts,” she said.

“We were able to bring to them a num­ber of in­cen­tives that are avail­able and I made the point ear­li­er that the Prime Min­is­ter (Dr Kei­th Row­ley) three years ago said to me that we should be pre­sent­ing all of the in­cen­tives pre­sent­ed to top busi­ness­es. I have to go back to him this time to say that af­ter the in­cen­tives added in the last bud­get, we can say we have closed the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem in terms of the ini­tia­tives on of­fer.”

Gopee-Scoon said there are ways the min­istry can help through the Ex­im­bank to push To­ba­go-based prod­ucts to Cari­com and the in­ter­na­tion­al trade mar­ket.