A to­tal of $4,385,000 will be giv­en out in grants by the Plan­ning Min­istry to 50 peo­ple who came up with in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ideas in the "Idea 2 In­no­va­tion Com­pe­ti­tion". This was dis­closed by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie yes­ter­day at a func­tion to present the grants at the Hy­att Re­gency. "I had ac­cess to $10 mil­lion but I did not give out all," the min­is­ter said.

Those re­ceiv­ing grants of up to $200,000 sub­mit­ted new ideas for the man­u­fac­tur­ing, ser­vices, cre­ative in­dus­tries, ICT, agro-pro­cess­ing, food and bev­er­age, waste man­age­ment and green in­dus­tries sec­tors. Ed­mund Ram­ta­hal re­ceived a grant for com­ing up with an idea for dou­bles pro­duc­tion ma­chin­ery. Jo­mo Wah­tuse and Gre­go­ry Di­az were award­ed a grant for cre­at­ing the JW Byke­mow­er Ex­er­cise Ap­pa­ra­tus, which en­ables you to cut your lawn and ex­er­cise at the same time.

Not­ing that it is on­ly through in­no­va­tion that a small coun­try like T&T can com­pete glob­al­ly, Tewarie said the Min­istry launched the com­pe­ti­tion in May ear­li­er this year. Cit­i­zens were in­vit­ed to sub­mit their ideas for con­sid­er­a­tion for grant fund­ing. The com­pe­ti­tion was the first ma­jor ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry's Coun­cil for Com­pet­i­tive­ness and In­no­va­tion (CCI), es­tab­lished ear­ly in 2011 as an ad­vi­so­ry to the Min­istry.

The CCI now has a spe­cif­ic man­date to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove this coun­try's glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, CCI?chair­man, Chanka Seeter­am, ad­dress­ing the func­tion, said. Seeter­am, not­ing that the com­pe­ti­tion is oc­cur­ring dur­ing T&T's 50th in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary, said it was not sole­ly a fund­ing scheme but a ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ex­er­cise.

Tewarie said in 2012, T&T placed 81 out of 142 coun­tries in com­pet­i­tive­ness and there was a crit­i­cal need to ad­dress the is­sue of in­no­va­tion. On the Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex T&T ranks 72 out of 125 coun­tries, he said. "The com­pe­ti­tion rep­re­sents an in­vest­ment in the cre­ativ­i­ty, po­ten­tial and in­ge­nu­ity of cit­i­zens to con­ceive new in­ven­tions and in­no­v­a­tive projects," Tewarie said.

Those who re­ceived grants will be of­fered tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive help by the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute to set up busi­ness­es and there may be a flood of new com­pa­nies in T&T. The Min­is­ter urged un­suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants not to be dis­cour­aged, as­sur­ing that fail­ure is part of en­tre­pre­neur­ial growth. "We must not rush to aban­don an idea just be­cause oth­ers may not ful­ly com­pre­hend our vi­sion," he ad­vised.