Sean Nero

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Gov­ern­ment will in­crease ac­tiv­i­ty in en­er­gy ex­plo­ration as the State seeks to open up av­enues for in­vest­ment, both lo­cal and for­eign. Yes­ter­day, Cab­i­net was ex­pect­ed to sign off on six deep wa­ter bids, fol­low­ing sev­er­al rounds of bid­ding. Speak­ing at Wednes­day's Sixth An­nu­al Busi­ness Hall of Fame In­duc­tion Cer­e­mo­ny and Gala Din­ner host­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, the Prime Min­is­ter said T&T's eco­nom­ic growth was still de­pen­dant on oil and gas and that gov­ern­ment was in­tent on reap­ing its ben­e­fits. "Our em­pha­sis, in the com­ing years, will be to max­imise our po­ten­tial re­turns from this in­dus­try. The Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a strate­gic de­ci­sion to ex­tract the max­i­mum val­ue from our mol­e­cules of nat­ur­al gas. To this end, the Min­istry of En­er­gy has been fa­cil­i­tat­ing dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers in the man­u­fac­tur­ing, bank­ing and en­er­gy sec­tors.

We be­lieve that the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor can use the Melamine pro­duced by the re­cent­ly com­mis­sioned AUM plant to ush­er in a new gen­er­a­tion of en­er­gy-based in­dus­tries in Trinidad and To­ba­go. In this way we can de­vel­op new in­dus­tries by syn­er­gis­ing com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages of the both the man­u­fac­tur­ing and en­er­gy sec­tors," said Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She said her re­cent trips abroad were, by and large, op­por­tu­ni­ties which were grasped to height­en the im­age of T&T abroad in a strate­gic and tar­get­ed man­ner. Meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton and Lon­don, she said, not on­ly strength­ened this coun­try's diplo­mat­ic pres­ence, but al­lowed it to pur­sue a strat­e­gy of be­com­ing a con­duit, a link be­tween the Com­mon­wealth and the Amer­i­c­as. The Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted to be­ing heart­ened by an ini­tia­tive tak­en by lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies to look be­yond T&T for op­por­tu­ni­ties.

She viewed this as a vi­sion that T&T with its wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and high­ly skilled work­force would be­come an en­er­gy ser­vices hub, sup­ply­ing ser­vices to Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca and Africa. "This ini­tia­tive is in line with our pol­i­cy to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my away from de­plet­ing re­sources and to­wards sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. This is the type of vi­sion is need­ed. "As I speak, ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing with the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Coun­cil and the Coun­cil of Amer­i­c­as to for­mu­late a joint busi­ness fo­rum which will be held by Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2011. "Now more than ever, the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go should work hard to sta­bi­lize the lo­cal econ­o­my and re­build its so­ci­ety un­der the guid­ed prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. "Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways, and will al­ways prove to be a na­tion that pro­motes pros­per­i­ty, fa­cil­i­tates in­no­va­tion, cre­ates wealth, pro­motes de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance and most im­por­tant­ly, im­proves the stan­dard of liv­ing for all our cit­i­zens," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.