The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) said yes­ter­day that it was pleased that the In­dus­try Fund which was signed by the TTMA and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) in Sep­tem­ber 2005 is be­ing re­vis­it­ed, as there are sig­nif­i­cant gains for man­u­fac­tur­ers. In a re­lease to the me­dia yes­ter­day, the TTMA said that man­u­fac­tur­ers have so far not tak­en ad­van­tage of this fa­cil­i­ty.

On Thurs­day NGC Pres­i­dent In­dar Ma­haraj urged man­u­fac­tur­ers to ac­cess the $ 24 mil­lion. TTMA stat­ed: "How­ev­er we hope to work with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to re­view the cri­te­ria for ac­cess­ing the fund and to en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion by mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion." The NGC In­dus­try Fund for the De­vel­op­ment of the Light In­dus­tri­al and Com­mer­cial Sec­tor of Trinidad and To­ba­go was es­tab­lished by the NGC and TTMA for the fol­low­ing pur­pos­es:

(a) The fund­ing of tech­ni­cal stud­ies for the im­prove­ment of plant, op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies and en­er­gy op­ti­mi­sa­tion stud­ies.

(b) The un­der­tak­ing of ex­pan­sion stud­ies where nat­ur­al gas us­age as a fu­el would be in­creased and/or op­ti­mised.

(c) Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing stud­ies to fa­cil­i­tate growth and ex­pan­sion ini­tia­tives for de­vel­op­ment of new do­mes­tic and ex­port mar­kets.

(d) Re­search and De­vel­op­ment stud­ies to de­vel­op new prod­ucts.

(e) Fund­ing of ini­tia­tives for the es­tab­lish­ment of an In­sti­tute of man­u­fac­tur­ing or its equiv­a­lent.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMA, it en­vi­sions that re­cy­cling ini­tia­tives such as tyres plas­tics, use of al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy and es­tab­lish­ment of a pho­to­volta­ic in­dus­try are some of the po­ten­tial projects that could be fi­nanced by the LIC fund. Such projects will have a last­ing im­pact on our en­vi­ron­ment, in ad­di­tion to con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.