Speak­ing at the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T's (COTT) Break­fast Sem­i­nar on Wednes­day, Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said there is still very lit­tle un­der­stand­ing in coun­tries across the world on the eco­nom­ics, op­er­a­tions and com­mer­cial­i­ty of the cre­ative in­dus­tries sec­tor.

"A study on the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try has shown that it is es­ti­mat­ed to gen­er­ate $169m an­nu­al­ly, em­ploy­ing some 5600 per­sons. At a na­tion­al lev­el, our Car­ni­val re­mains by far the largest gen­er­a­tor of rev­enues with­in the mu­sic/en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor, pro­duc­ing $154m and em­ploy­ing over 3500 per­sons," he said.

In his ad­dress to stake­hold­ers in the mu­sic in­dus­try, Bharath re-em­pha­sised that the cre­ative in­dus­tries sec­tor has been iden­ti­fied by the Gov­ern­ment for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. Bharath said "pil­lar five of Gov­ern­ment's Medi­um Term Pol­i­cy Frame­work 2011-2014 speaks to a more di­ver­si­fied, knowl­edge in­ten­sive econ­o­my–build­ing on the na­tive ge­nius of our peo­ple".

"For the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try to grow and de­vel­op, there must be a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the is­sues and ob­sta­cles that con­tin­ue to plague the in­dus­try, with a view of im­ple­ment­ing prac­ti­cal and ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions to these bar­ri­ers to growth." he said.Bharath said fol­low­ing a year-long se­ries of con­sul­ta­tions, Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished a new state en­ter­prise un­der his min­istry's purview–the T&T Cre­ative In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny (Cre­ativeTT).

"Cre­ativeTT has the man­date to stim­u­late and fa­cil­i­tate the busi­ness and ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties of the lo­cal cre­ative in­dus­tries to gen­er­ate na­tion­al wealth. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, un­der the aus­pices of Cre­ativeTT, a sub­sidiary com­pa­ny–the Mu­sic Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Mu­sicTT) will dri­ve the de­vel­op­ment of the mu­sic in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go which is a sec­tor that fos­ters in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty."

The Trade Min­is­ter added: "In the past, many suc­cess­ful mu­sic artistes have gone out there and made it on their own, tak­ing our art form on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. The Gov­ern­ment seeks to cor­rect this by pro­vid­ing the prop­er or­ga­ni­za­tion­al sup­port, sys­tems and ex­per­tise through Cre­ativeTT which would sup­port and guide lo­cal artistes and en­cour­age young peo­ple to see the sec­tor as a thriv­ing, mean­ing­ful and prof­itable ca­reer op­tion."

Josh Rud­der, CEO, COTT said: "The cre­ative sec­tor is rapid­ly grow­ing in the re­gion how­ev­er there is a need to en­sure that the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights of the cre­ators are pro­tect­ed and prop­er com­pen­sa­tion is giv­en to con­tin­ue the sec­tors' growth."