Derek Achong

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has in­vit­ed lo­cal busi­ness peo­ple to ac­com­pa­ny Gov­ern­ment's del­e­ga­tion to the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Brazil. Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued the open in­vi­ta­tion at the launch of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI)'s Caribbean Com­pet­i­tive­ness Cen­tre at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, last week. This year's World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum on Latin Amer­i­ca takes place in Rio de Janeiro be­tween April 27 and 29. The theme of the fo­rum is Lay­ing the Foun­da­tion for a Latin Amer­i­can Decade.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke of busi­ness fo­rums at­tend­ed by lo­cal busi­ness lead­ers in the Unit­ed King­dom dur­ing this year's Com­mon­wealth Day cel­e­bra­tions. "Busi­ness lead­ers from T&T ac­com­pa­nied me and we met with a num­ber of busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives from Eu­rope," she said. "We hope to see some ac­tion on this front in both di­rec­tions soon­er, rather than lat­er. "If you (busi­ness lead­ers) are in­ter­est­ed, you may ac­com­pa­ny the Gov­ern­ment's del­e­ga­tion to Brazil," she added.The 16-man busi­ness del­e­ga­tion which ac­com­pa­nied the Gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tion to the UK last week paid the costs of trav­el and ac­com­mo­da­tion for the trip, them­selves.

That del­e­ga­tion sparked out­cry from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley who ques­tioned the cri­te­ria used for se­lect­ing mem­bers. That del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Do­minic Hadeed (Blue Wa­ters); Di­an­na de Sousa (TSTT); Ger­vais Warn­er (Neal & Massy Hold­ings); Ju­nior Sam­my (Ju­nior Sam­my Con­struc­tion); Roy Peake (Peake In­dus­tries); Ger­ry Brooks (Ansa McAL); Lar­ry Howai (First Cit­i­zens Bank); Derek Hud­son (BGTT). Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so an­nounced a part­ner­ship with British Gas for the fo­rum. "We have been in­vit­ed to part­ner with BG, who has promised to in­vest US$30 bil­lion over five years to groom the Brazil­ian en­er­gy sec­tor," she said.

"It is be­cause we have cap­i­talised on our nat­ur­al re­sources in the en­er­gy sec­tor with over 100 years of ex­pe­ri­ence and have built the knowl­edge ca­pac­i­ty in the in­dus­try." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said this part­ner­ship with BG would open doors for T&T in Brazil as it (BG) helps de­vel­op the en­er­gy sec­tor there.

It was an­nounced that Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz would be the fa­cil­i­ta­tor for the busi­ness del­e­ga­tion to the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum.