Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Six months af­ter turn­ing the sod for con­struc­tion of the Cen­tre for En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie re­turned to the site yes­ter­day to see the progress of works. The cen­tre, at Freeport, is ex­pect­ed to boost busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in south and cen­tral Trinidad.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the tour, Tewarie said con­struc­tion ex­pe­ri­enced a month long set­back, but should open in the first quar­ter of this year. He said the lo­gis­tics are still be­ing worked out but he is con­fi­dent one sec­tion of the cen­tre will be on stream by the end of this month.

The fa­cil­i­ty, a project of the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) will pro­vide ac­com­mo­da­tion, tech­ni­cal and busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry sup­port ser­vices to in­di­vid­u­als and en­ter­pris­es with in­no­v­a­tive ideas and projects from the busi­ness in­cu­ba­tion stage to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

Tewarie said the eco­nom­ic growth re­quired in T&T can­not al­ways be achieved by fol­low­ing tra­di­tion­al busi­ness mod­els. He said a com­pet­i­tive, in­no­va­tion-dri­ven econ­o­my is now an im­per­a­tive for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship must be the dri­ving force for gen­er­at­ing high­er lev­els of growth. Among those who vis­it­ed the site were Cariri chair­man Hay­den Fer­reira and CEO Li­aquat Ali Shah.