A T&T-based com­pa­ny is among 12 fi­nal­ists in the 2013 Caribbean Idea Mar­ket­place (CIM).Par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies vied for US$100,000 award and a chance to par­tic­i­pate in the Glob­al Fo­rum on In­no­va­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy in South Africa in May 2013.Fi­nal­ists were an­nounced at the CIM award cer­e­mo­ny held last week at the Pe­ga­sus Ho­tel, Kingston, Ja­maica. The 12 CIM fi­nal­ists pre­sent­ed their in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ideas to an au­di­ence of po­ten­tial part­ners and in­vestors.

The T&T-based com­pa­ny's project dealt with com­mer­cial sol­id waste re­cy­cling. Ac­cord­ing to the CIM web­site, the com­pa­ny pro­vides re­cy­cling ser­vices to in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial busi­ness­es us­ing glob­al­ly ac­cept­ed stan­dards.Among those in at­ten­dance were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank as well as from the In­ter­na­tion­al Di­as­po­ra En­gage­ment Al­liance Mod­el from the Sec­re­tary's Of­fice of Glob­al Part­ner­ships and the US De­part­ment of State.

CIM brings to­geth­er key ex­perts on di­as­po­ra en­gage­ment, en­tre­pre­neurs, lead­ers in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment and oth­er promi­nent mem­bers of the Caribbean's di­verse com­mu­ni­ties. It is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by Com­pete Caribbean and the In­ter­na­tion­al di­as­po­ra En­gage­ment Al­liance (IdEA) along with their part­ners and donors: Dig­i­cel, Sco­tia­bank, the Over­seas Pri­vate In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (OPIC), in­foDev, the UK's De­part­ment for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, the Cana­di­an In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Agency (CI­DA) and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

CIM was of­fi­cial­ly launched on March 1, 2012 by Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Por­tia Simp­son Miller and for­mer US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton.