Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz says Gov­ern­ment will soon be sign­ing off on $950 mil­lion worth of in­vest­ment. He said none was as­so­ci­at­ed with oil and gas. Cadiz was the fea­ture speak­er at a lun­cheon meet­ing host­ed by the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber of T&T yes­ter­day at the Kam­po Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas. He said: "This morn­ing (yes­ter­day) at a fo­rum Mr (Win­ston) Dook­er­an asked me about what sort of in­vest­ments we are look­ing at and I con­firmed to­day that be­tween this Thurs­day at Cab­i­net and next week Thurs­day at Cab­i­net that we have $950 mil­lion worth of in­vest­ment that we will be sign­ing off on-and not one sin­gle one has to do with oil and gas."

Among those in­vest­ments are the car­ri­er ho­tel on the Tamana Park which Cadiz said would be the first ten­ant. A car­ri­er ho­tel, al­so called a colo­ca­tion cen­tre is a se­cure phys­i­cal site or build­ing where da­ta com­mu­ni­ca­tions me­dia con­verge and are in­ter­con­nect­ed. It would be the first car­ri­er ho­tel in T&T. He said a pri­vate, lo­cal com­pa­ny would be in­vest­ing more than $300 mil­lion in a "par­tic­u­lar" man­u­fac­tur­ing ven­ture which will be signed off this week. In ad­di­tion, Cadiz said "a brand new ser­vice" will be lo­cat­ed off­shore at Point Lisas. Cadiz said: "That rep­re­sents about $950 mil­lion worth of in­vest­ment and they are go­ing to be em­ploy­ing about 400 or 500 peo­ple in good pay­ing jobs.

"So when we talk about lo­cal con­tent what we are look­ing at is build­ing that ca­pac­i­ty in all dif­fer­ent ar­eas." Com­ment­ing on the suc­cess of Anya Ay­oung-Chee in the re­al­i­ty se­ries Project Run­away in the Unit­ed States, Cadiz said she sent a mes­sage to young peo­ple in T&T that they could achieve any­thing. He said she sold T&T and that the show was "a very well-recog­nised show." Cadiz said there was no ser­vice re­quired in T&T that a com­pa­ny or na­tion­al could not at­tempt. "When I look at the suc­cess of Point Lisas...how many ex­pats ac­tu­al­ly are work­ing in Point Lisas? "How many ex­pats are run­ning those plants in Point Lisas?" Cadiz asked. He an­swered his ques­tion say­ing there were few.