JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Florida-based Trini businessman to invest $20m in Chaguanas

by

20111012

A $20 mil­lion in­vest­ment that in­cor­po­rates en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly tech­nol­o­gy is com­ing to the bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas. This word comes from Mi­a­mi busi­ness­man Mukesh Ram­per­sad, who is spear­head­ing a group of busi­ness­men to in­vest the busy cen­tral bor­ough in the ar­eas of door man­u­fac­tur­ing and au­to­mo­tive cus­tomis­ing. In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Ram­per­sad said the in­vest­ment should see the cre­ation of more than 150 jobs over the next two years and the in­tro­duc­tion of new "green" tech­nolo­gies and train­ing. Ram­per­sad left T&T 25 years ago and start­ed from the ground up in the fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try and went on to es­tab­lish the Pres­tige Au­to and Cy­cle Body Works in Flori­da. Ram­per­sad said mar­ket re­search was done in T&T.

He said this coun­try has a lot of car en­thu­si­ast who would be will­ing to pay for the ex­pert cus­tomis­ing work his com­pa­ny can per­form. On the fur­ni­ture side, Ram­per­sad said the op­er­a­tion plans on us­ing lo­cal teak and hard­wood sourced from Guyana to man­u­fac­ture doors and oth­er types of fur­ni­ture for ex­port to Eu­ro­pean and North Amer­i­can mar­kets. Ram­per­sad said he feels good about com­ing home to T&T to in­vest since he be­lieves that the time was right since there are nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties be­ing of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment. Ram­per­sad said the downslide of the North Amer­i­can econ­o­my has not af­fect­ed his busi­ness sub­stan­tial­ly.

He said Pres­tige deals with five big in­sur­ance com­pa­nies and gets a small bite of the au­to re­pairs that em­anate from the es­ti­mat­ed 160,000 an­nu­al col­li­sions re­port­ed in Broward and Dade coun­ties in south Flori­da. Deputy Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Bood­han said the bor­ough re­ceived a lot of crit­i­cism when it sought to twin with the city of Lauder­hill, Flori­da, last year. He said de­trac­tors said the move would have not borne any fruit.

Bood­han said: "This is what were are try­ing to do: get more in­vestors com­ing to cen­tral and T&T in a bid to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment. Ch­agua­nas has a wealth of hu­man re­source and, of course, land for the es­tab­lish­ment of fac­to­ries and oth­er busi­ness ven­tures. The bor­ough is sur­round­ed by for­mer sug­ar­cane lands that are now con­trolled by the EM­B­DC (Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd)." Bood­han said he en­vi­sions more T&T busi­ness­men liv­ing abroad re­turn­ing and mak­ing an in­vest­ment. "We have a good cli­mate for in­vest­ment, the Gov­ern­ment is of­fer­ing sev­er­al in­cen­tives and work­ing on the prob­lem of crime. Peo­ple in the out­side world are tak­ing note. We are sell­ing our­selves (Ch­agua­nas) as the place to be, the place to in­vest."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored