"One of the new fea­tures on the fi­nan­cial ser­vices land­scape is the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) which will serve as a gate­way to op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca and sup­port the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of T&T's econ­o­my.

Since our last Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion the world fi­nan­cial mar­kets has suf­fered from the ef­fects of the sub-prime mort­gage prob­lems that be­gan in the Unit­ed States, and pru­dence dic­tat­ed cau­tion in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the TTIFC.

There are now signs that con­fi­dence in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets is grow­ing and sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions have once again be­gun to ex­press in­ter­est in the val­ue propo­si­tion that the TTIFC rep­re­sents.

We have con­tin­ued work on the tax, le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that will un­der­pin the op­er­a­tions of the TTIFC. We are in the process of draft­ing the en­abling spe­cial pur­pose eco­nom­ic zone (SPEZ) leg­is­la­tion which will be brought to this House in the first quar­ter of this fis­cal year. The es­tab­lish­ment of the one will cre­ate an at­trac­tive, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment for par­tic­i­pant firms, while pro­tect­ing the in­ter­ests of lo­cal firms.

Spe­cial pur­pose eco­nom­ic zones ex­ist in many IFCs, in­clud­ing in Dubai and Dublin. The cre­ation of the SPEZ will en­sure the rapid es­tab­lish­ment of the TTIFC and will guar­an­tee re­spon­sive­ness to chang­ing mar­ket de­mands.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so es­tab­lished the TTIFC Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny to man­age the fi­nan­cial cen­tre. This com­pa­ny is en­gaged in ac­tive dis­cus­sions with firms in­ter­est­ed in as­set man­age­ment, com­modi­ties trad­ing, in­ter­na­tion­al loans syn­di­ca­tion, wealth man­age­ment, car­bon trad­ing and with a spe­cial pur­pose funds man­age­ment com­pa­ny with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the de­vel­op­ment of small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es in T&T.

The TTIFC mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives were re­newed in Wash­ing­ton, New York and Lon­don as we pre­pare to en­gage strong in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in this ve­hi­cle for our na­tion's di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust."