Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ments Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath says by De­cem­ber this year the Port Au­thor­i­ty will have the ca­pac­i­ty to scan some 200 con­tain­ers per hour.He said the Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly pur­chased the $25 mil­lion scan­ner through a grant fund­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Chi­na."We ex­pect de­liv­ery and op­er­a­tion of the scan­ner by Christ­mas 2013," he told leg­is­la­tors.

Bharath was con­tribut­ing to yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate, Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on the 2014 na­tion­al bud­get, which was pre­sent­ed ear­li­er by Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.He said the funds were avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment for more than ten years but not ac­cessed by for­mer gov­ern­ments.

Bharath said the Gov­ern­ment was about es­tab­lish sev­en in­dus­tri­al parks at cen­tral and south Trinidad. He said the in­dus­tri­al parks are to be "rolled out by De­cem­ber 2014."He said there were al­so plans to es­tab­lish dry dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties at Sea Lots. He said the project was be­ing un­der­tak­en with Trinidad Dry Dock Com­pa­ny Ltd. He said Chi­na Har­bour was con­duct­ing a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for the project and the re­port will be avail­able at the end of this month.

Bharath al­so said the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd was look­ing at a joint ven­ture and a pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­ny for the dis­pos­al of all waste. He did not name the joint ven­ture com­pa­ny but said the project re­lat­ed to the re­moval of waste at the Beetham, For­res Park and Gua­napo land­fill sites. He said the lands were ex­pect­ed to be re­turned to the Gov­ern­ment af­ter six years.

The min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the for­mer Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny ap­proved more than 878 loans over its ten-year ex­is­tence but on­ly 157 were re­paid.He the to­tal val­ue of the loans was $58.8 mil­lion and on­ly $2.18 mil­lion was re­cov­ered.