Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Cather­ine Ku­mar chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of T&T Cham­ber says she hopes that BP Trinidad and To­ba­go's (bpTT) one tril­lion cu­bic feet gas find does not de­ter the Gov­ern­ment from its di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust. Ku­mar said so yes­ter­day dur­ing a break­fast meet­ing the Cham­ber held with the Trade and In­vest­ment Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath at its head of­fice in West­moor­ings.

T&T must seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lever­age the wealth cre­at­ed by its en­er­gy re­sources to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my re­sources, Ku­mar said, adding that the in­crease in the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas in the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries was ex­pect­ed to have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the price of the com­mod­i­ty. She stat­ed that there was a need to deep­en the com­mit­ment and po­lit­i­cal will to fur­ther the de­vel­op­ment of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

How­ev­er Ku­mar said: "I re­al­ly trust that the an­nounce­ment by BP of that gas find would not de­ter or in any way change that com­mit­ment to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion." She not­ed that one of the main av­enues for a suc­cess­ful di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy is to fur­ther in­vest in the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor and in­fra­struc­ture, which would fa­cil­i­tate the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Ku­mar said the Cham­ber would con­tin­ue to work with the pub­lic sec­tor to cre­ate sus­tain­able busi­ness out­side of the en­er­gy sec­tor. On Mon­day bpTT an­nounced it had dis­cov­ered an es­ti­mat­ed one tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of gas off­shore Trinidad, which was said to be one of its biggest find in years.