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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Small business grant triples

by

20140318

The Sow­ing Em­pow­er­ment through En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment grant has been raised from $5,000 to $15,000.So said Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence at the min­istry, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the pro­gramme had been re­brand­ed and the grant was raised to as­sist small busi­ness own­ers and so help re­duce pover­ty.

He said ac­cord­ing to the lat­est sta­tis­tics, pover­ty had been re­duced from 24 per cent to 14.7 per cent.The pro­gramme is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the min­istry and the Unit­ed Na­tions' Mi­cro En­ter­prise Loan Project, which ran be­tween 2001 and 2012."The UNDP was a mem­ber of the tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee for the Sur­vey of Liv­ing Con­di­tions in 2005 and the UNDP will be com­menc­ing the Re­gion­al/Com­mu­ni­ty Pover­ty Pro­file in Ari­ma with fund­ing from the Chilean Gov­ern­ment and has re­quest­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion with the min­istry," he said.

He said oth­er coun­tries, such as Suri­name, Aru­ba, Cu­ra­cao and Mar­tinique, are al­so work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pro­gramme.Bagatelle, Carlsen Field and ar­eas in cen­tral Trinidad have high lev­els of pover­ty and low-in­come cit­i­zens could be as­sist­ed by the project."Those rear­ing ducks, eggs, pat choi and aqua­cul­ture can be as­sist­ed in this very unique ground-break­ing de­vel­op­ment," he said.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said that would in­crease the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the busi­ness and make tremen­dous head­way in get­ting small busi­ness own­ers off the ground.Richard Ble­witt, UN res­i­dent co-or­di­na­tor, said the pro­gramme was an es­sen­tial work to the Unit­ed Na­tions.


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