Ali­cia Llanos

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Stephen Cadiz says the pri­or­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment is to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my away from its de­pen­dence on the oil and gas sec­tor.

Cadiz was speak­ing yes­ter­day af­ter a Cab­i­net ori­en­ta­tion pro­gramme at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. "The main dri­ve of this Gov­ern­ment is to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my in ar­eas oth­er than the oil and gas in­dus­try," he said. "We are look­ing to work on rais­ing all non-oil and gas con­tri­bu­tions to the GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct)." He said the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing to ex­pand the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try.

Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment was aware that the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try "took a hit with the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis" and was com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing its growth. He said the ex­pan­sion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try would ad­dress the two is­sues of un­em­ploy­ment and com­pet­i­tive­ness on the glob­al mar­kets. Cadiz said an is­sue with many in­dus­tries was sourc­ing a qual­i­fied a hu­man re­source base. He said to tack­le the prob­lem, the min­istry would col­lab­o­rate with both the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion.

When asked about the Gov­ern­ment's cam­paign stance against for­eign in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment was not against for­eign in­vestors, but would en­sure any in­dus­try com­ing in­to the coun­try would be to the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple. Re­fer­ring the last gov­ern­ment's plan to con­struct a smelter plant in La Brea, Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment would not har­bour any in­dus­try that could pose dan­ger to T&T's cit­i­zens or en­vi­ron­ment.

Cadiz said a key com­po­nent to ex­pand­ing the econ­o­my was en­cour­ag­ing part­ner­ship be­tween in­dus­tries and get­ting var­i­ous par­ties in­volved. He said he would soon be meet­ing with the Cham­bers and oth­er busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions to dis­cuss is­sues that were af­fect­ing their in­dus­tries, in or­der to craft spe­cif­ic so­lu­tions. "Noth­ing can­not be sort­ed out once there is a will to do so."