Fol­low­ing the re­cent vis­it to T&T by Luis Al­ber­to Moreno, pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Vice Pres­i­dent for Coun­tries of the IDB, Rober­to Vel­lu­ti­ni, ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion from Plan­ning and the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie.

Dur­ing this vis­it from Feb­ru­ary 4 to 5, Vel­lu­ti­ni and mem­bers of the IDB team met with Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Lar­ry Howai and his team to share ideas and dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ment of Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships (PPPs) and non-sov­er­eign op­por­tu­ni­ties for loans to both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers.

A meet­ing was al­so held with Tewarie and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from his min­istry to dis­cuss the sta­tus of the coun­try strat­e­gy and the coun­try pro­gramme for 2013 to 2014 with the aim of iden­ti­fy­ing nec­es­sary ad­just­ments and mod­i­fi­ca­tions, as well as the plans mov­ing for­ward for projects in East Port-of-Spain.

One of the key col­lab­o­ra­tive projects of the Gov­ern­ment and the IDB is the Emerg­ing and Sus­tain­able Cities Ini­tia­tive (ES­CI) which was de­vel­oped by the IDB to help emerg­ing mid-sized cities in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean ad­dress some of the chal­lenges fac­ing their ur­ban cen­tres.

Port-of-Spain is one of five cities in cho­sen by the IDB for in­clu­sion in the ES­CI and is se­lect­ed to pi­o­neer the ini­tia­tive with fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty in East Port-of-Spain. The process utilis­es a deep col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies, com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers of the area, the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.

Vel­lu­ti­ni was privy to one of the many pro­pos­als in East Port-of-Spain util­is­ing the trin­i­ty of pub­lic-, pri­vate- and com­mu­ni­ty-based in­volve­ment while on a site vis­it to the for­mer Mary­land RC School lo­cat­ed in Bel­mont with­in close prox­im­i­ty to the La­dy Young Road.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Bel­mont com­mu­ni­ty pro­pose to con­struct a vo­ca­tion­al train­ing in­sti­tute on the site which will pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as fa­cil­i­ties to de­vel­op small to medi­um en­ter­pris­es and en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty. The land was do­nat­ed for the project by the Ro­man Catholic Church. Part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor on the project is an­oth­er key in­gre­di­ent that will con­tribute to the project's suc­cess.