Nadaleen Singh

The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Ned­co) and the Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (Ytepp), signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) on Mon­day to equip Ytepp's grad­u­ates with skills for rais­ing cap­i­tal to start busi­ness.Speak­ing at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing in Port-of-Spain, Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod said Ytepp will "pro­vide pro­grammes to ad­dress the prob­lem of high youth un­em­ploy­ment."

The MOU will be for three years and Ned­co and Ytepp will set up a steer­ing com­mit­tee to be chaired by the en­tre­pre­neur­ial de­vel­op­ment Sup­port Ser­vices man­ag­er of Ytepp and the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ned­co."This arrange­ment be­tween Ned­co and Ytepp is meant to guide par­tic­i­pants step by step on their jour­ney to self-em­pow­er­ment," said McLeod who ex­plained that the two en­ti­ties will con­tribute to the ad­vance­ment of the small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es sec­tor by de­vel­op­ment of young en­tre­pre­neurs.

The Labour Min­istry launched the Na­tion­al In­te­grat­ed Busi­ness In­cu­ba­tor Sys­tem in Pe­nal/Siparia and San­gre Grande dur­ing the first quar­ter of this year.

Chair­man of Ytepp Chan­dar Gup­ta Su­per­sad said: "Since its in­cep­tion in 1988, Ytepp has ex­posed over 170,000 per­sons to train­ing and quite re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed just over 2,000 per­sons from both Trinidad and in To­ba­go who par­tic­i­pat­ed in pro­grammes from our youth train­ing and re­train­ing de­part­ments. This MOU pro­vides the plat­form for en­tre­pre­neur­ship for our grad­u­ates by re­mov­ing the chal­lenges of rais­ing start-up cap­i­tal."