Sean Nero

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has spent close half-a-bil­lion dol­lars over the past 13 years to stim­u­late and nur­ture busi­ness de­vel­op­ment on the is­land, says Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don.

He said en­ter­prise fos­ter­ing ini­tia­tives such as the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Loan Pro­gramme es­tab­lished in 2003, the De­part­ment of Ad­vance Train­ing and Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices (DATAS) and its ven­ture cap­i­tal com­pa­ny, en­sure that To­bag­o­ni­ans were not bereft of op­por­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate wealth and stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

Speak­ing at the To­ba­go Eco­nom­ic and Busi­ness Out­look Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Di­vi­sion for Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment at the Mag­dale­na Grand and Beach Re­sort, Lon­don said: "We pro­vide loans, and grants, as well as busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices to To­bag­o­ni­ans wish­ing to start new busi­ness­es and to ex­pand ex­ist­ing en­ter­pris­es.

"Since the in­cep­tion of the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Loan Pro­gramme in 2003, loans to­tal­ing $27.1 mil­lion have been dis­bursed to 262 To­bag­o­ni­ans to fa­cil­i­tate en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ties. In re­spect to the grant pro­gramme, since its in­tro­duc­tion in 2011, grants to­tal­ing $11.8 mil­lion have been dis­bursed to 688 To­bag­o­ni­ans. In­ter­est­ing­ly, quite a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the re­cip­i­ents of the grants have been women and young peo­ple."

Lon­don said a crit­i­cal ad­van­tage of the pro­grammes is that, ar­eas like agri­cul­ture and fish­ing which tra­di­tion­al­ly have been viewed by com­mer­cial banks as too risky, al­so get fi­nan­cial sup­port.

He said two mul­ti-pur­pose units (MPUs) are be­ing con­struct­ed the Cove Eco-In­dus­tri­al and Busi­ness Park to pro­vide space for small and mi­cro agro-pro­cess­ing en­ter­pris­es. In ad­di­tion, through the Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Com­pa­ny the THA pro­vid­ed sup­port to non-tra­di­tion­al en­ter­prise ven­tures.

"On­ly re­cent­ly, through the Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Com­pa­ny, the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil ap­proved $1.9 mil­lion to as­sist the Pork In­ter­na­tion­al Group (PIG), a lo­cal com­pa­ny in the food pro­cess­ing in­dus­try, to ex­pand their busi­ness op­er­a­tions," he said.

Lon­don said: "The next crit­i­cal pil­lar in our over­all eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust re­lates to our con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to en­cour­age more per­sons in To­ba­go to be­come en­tre­pre­neur­ial and get in­volved in busi­ness.

"As an As­sem­bly, we will con­tin­ue to pro­vide the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for much more per­sons in To­ba­go to get in­volved in en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ties."