Gail Alexan­der

Trinidad and To­ba­go is open for busi­ness, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning said yes­ter­day, mak­ing a strong mar­ket­ing pitch on be­half of T&T to an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence.

"Dis­tin­guished mem­bers of the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, I want to wish those of you who are vis­it­ing a pleas­ant and mem­o­rable stay. "T&T is open for busi­ness and looks for­ward to wel­com­ing you to par­tic­i­pate," Man­ning added, dur­ing the launch of yes­ter­day's Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum (CBF). He was ad­dress­ing lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al cap­tains of in­dus­try and lead­ers, plus rep­re­sen­ta­tives of acad­e­mia aboard the Ser­e­nade of the Seas–one of the two cruise ships host­ing events for this week's Com­mon­wealth meet­ing. The CBF is a key net­work­ing event–in­volv­ing pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ments–in the se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties lead­ing up to the 21st Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ments Meet­ing lat­er this week. Man­ning said: "In much the same way as T&T was pleased to host the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, we are de­light­ed to be host to the present com­ing to­geth­er of the na­tions of the world."

Ad­dress­ing his high lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence, Man­ning strong­ly pitched T&T as an in­vest­ment lo­cale, adding: "We are a small arch­i­pel­ag­ic state but one with a sig­nif­i­cant and crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant dif­fer­ence. This coun­try is high­ly in­dus­tri­alised with the ex­cep­tion of To­ba­go, which is tourism-ori­ent­ed. "Our high lev­el of in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion has been based pri­mar­i­ly on our ex­ploita­tion of our hy­dro-car­bon re­sources." Man­ning of­fered T&T as an in­vest­ment –friend­ly cli­mate with a strong fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and on-go­ing, as well as up­com­ing, projects over the next five to six years. Stat­ing that T&T is a con­tra­dic­tion to what is ex­pect­ed, Man­ning not­ed in T&T to­day un­em­ploy­ment stood at 5.1 per cen; and in­fla­tion, as of last month, at 2.7 per cent. Man­ning added: "This is a coun­try that has been able to weath­er the eco­nom­ic storm cur­rent­ly over­whelm­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

"And may I say that where­as most coun­tries are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a short­age of cash in the do­mes­tic fi­nan­cial sys­tem, we in Trinidad and To­ba­go are bat­tling against a liq­uid­i­ty prob­lem, with the Cen­tral Bank hav­ing to in­ter­vene to keep mat­ters on an even keel." He added: "Our doors are open and we are will­ing to part­ner with for­eign in­vestors as long as their poli­cies are in ac­cord with that of the Gov­ern­ment and are in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T."

Projects ahead

Man­ning not­ed the fol­low­ing new projects ahead:

* Com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion of an alu­mini­um smelter;

* con­struc­tion of a sec­ond iron and steel com­plex with­in two years;

* arrange­ments be­ing con­clud­ed for con­struc­tion of a com­plex for pro­duc­tion of polypropy­lene from nat­ur­al gas and spin-off down­stream pos­si­bil­i­ties;

* es­tab­lish­ment of a ma­jor dry-dock­ing fa­cil­i­ty and lat­er, a ship­yard;

* con­struc­tion of a pipeline to bring nat­ur­al gas to To­ba­go's new Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate;

* con­struc­tion of six new high­way sys­tems;

* an ad­di­tion­al and en­tire­ly new sys­tem for the trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter;

* de­vel­op­ment of eight non-en­er­gy ar­eas, in­clud­ing re­search in­to de­vel­op­ment of herbal prod­ucts;

* fur­ther re­duc­tion of the 25 per cent cor­po­ra­tion tax con­tem­plat­ed;

* pro­vi­sion of fi­bre op­tics to all T&T by 2014;

* con­struc­tion of four new de­sali­na­tion plants; and,

* con­tem­pla­tion of sec­ond oil re­fin­ery.