RAD­I­CA SOOKRAJ

The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank and At­lantic will be pump­ing $7 mil­lion to boost busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur­ship in the south­west­ern penin­su­la. This was re­vealed as the IDB and At­lantic launched a lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment (LED) project at the Point Fortin Town Hall yes­ter­day. Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of At­lantic, Nigel Dar­low, said LED's aim was to im­prove so­cial con­di­tions in the south­west re­gion.

"Our ex­pec­ta­tion now is that over the next 36 months, LED will bring key stake­hold­ers to­geth­er to achieve sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple," Dar­low said. He added that there was a need to strength­en ex­ist­ing mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es in the de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties of La Brea, Point Fortin, Cap-de-Ville, Ce­dros and Ica­cos.

"Pri­or­i­ty will be giv­en to 'green' en­ter­pris­es and those that are mak­ing use of nat­ur­al re­sources, such as tourism and agri­cul­ture," Dar­low said. He al­so said as­sis­tance would be giv­en to at-risk young peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly un­der-skilled and un­able to ac­cess em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. LED, Dar­low added, would al­so fa­cil­i­tate the trans­fer of knowl­edge to re­gions out­side the penin­su­la.

Mean­while, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, said the south­west re­gion had a pop­u­la­tion of un­der 20,000 peo­ple and an un­em­ploy­ment rate of 8.9 per cent. "This is much high­er than the na­tion­al 5.2 per cent fig­ure," he added. Even though Point Fortin has been the base of op­er­a­tions of some of the largest en­er­gy com­pa­nies, Tewarie said res­i­dents have not ben­e­fit­ed. How­ev­er, he said, with the LED pro­gramme, lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties will be equipped with re­sources and skills to im­prove their liveli­hoods.