Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Tim Gopeesingh has said T&T spends more of its Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) on ed­u­ca­tion than many oth­er de­vel­oped coun­tries. "We have con­tributed the largest per cent of our GDP in the past three bud­gets to­wards ed­u­ca­tion for both my Min­istry and the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion.

We re­ceived close to TT $9.1 bil­lion, close to 20 per cent of our an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture and near­ly six per cent of our GDP, match­ing and sur­pass­ing the ex­pen­di­ture of ed­u­ca­tion of Eng­land, Cana­da, the US and Fin­land where some of them are spend­ing less than 20 per cent of their an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture and less than six per cent of their GDP," he said.

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the launch of the Na­tion­al Youth Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Fo­rum 2012/2013 at Am­Cham's head of­fice, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain. Gopeesingh called Am­Cham's ed­u­ca­tion en­deav­ours "ad­mirable" in the light of a de­cline of pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem over the past few years.

"The pri­vate sec­tor used to take the lead in such ini­tia­tives set­ting great ex­am­ples for our coun­try but in re­cent years with the in­ter­ven­tion of the state in ma­jor ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes it seems that the gen­er­al in­ter­est in these are on the de­cline."