SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­man Rishi Kan­ick plans to rake in $1 mil­lion a month from the mo­tor sport in­dus­try. Kan­ick said he in­tends to get a mo­tor sport park in cen­tral Trinidad up and run­ning with­in the next two years, with the main ac­tiv­i­ty be­ing drag-rac­ing. Kan­ick was speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian on Sun­day fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Brazil­ian busi­ness­man and in­ter­na­tion­al drag rac­er, Sid­ney Fri­go at Fri­go's $24 mil­lion pri­vate race­way at Sao Paulo, Brazil, last week­end.

Kan­ick, who said his plans in­clude a $20 mil­lion pri­vate-pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment, added that he plans to mod­el his project based on Fri­go's pri­vate race­way at Sao Paulo. "We are in the tech­ni­cal phase of this project. Once it comes off the ground, the project would gen­er­ate over 100 per­ma­nent jobs and earn $1 mil­lion month­ly from var­i­ous events, such as drag-rac­ing, go-kart rac­ing, four-wheel dri­ve rac­ing."We want to to capi­tilise on sports tourism and make Trinidad the mec­ca of drag rac­ing in the re­gion, and, at the same time, ful­fil the crav­ing for lo­cal au­to sports en­thu­si­asts, who do not have a venue and some­times turn to have il­le­gal races on the pub­lic road­ways. The Gov­ern­ment stands to ben­e­fit, es­pe­cial­ly from the tax­es they would rake in from the rev­enue.

"Fri­go is in­ter­est­ed in the project and may be a po­ten­tial in­vestor. He has agreed to give us all the tech­ni­cal sup­port for this project to make it eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble. Ch­agua­nas is poised to be­come a city and we want it to be the home of the first or­gan­ised and pro­fes­sion­al drag-rac­ing strip in the coun­try." Kan­ick, a di­rec­tor on the board of the state-owned Seafood In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and a lo­cal cham­pi­on dra­grac­er, said he fund­ed the trip to Brazil in an ef­fort to see the re­al­i­sa­tion of a "very prof­itable ven­ture" that is be­ing un­der-utilised. The in­vest­ment can be re­cov­ered with­in two years, he said. Kan­ick pre­sent­ed Fri­go with a hand-craft­ed chrome steel­pan.

"The po­ten­tial for sports tourism is phe­nom­e­nal. Peo­ple trav­el all over the world to wit­ness drag-rac­ing events and we in the re­gion can give them more. They are get­ting the races, the sand, the sun and an all­round ex­pe­ri­ence." Kan­ick said the last time drag-rac­ing was held in T&T was in 2008 when the Cam­den airstrip in Cou­va was used. The Gov­ern­ment has since dis­al­lowed use of the airstrip for au­tosports. It was an­nounced ear­li­er this year that the Gov­ern­ment plans to use Cam­den to de­vel­op an air­port in cen­tral. Kan­ick said rac­ers spend quite a bit of mon­ey to ship their sport ve­hi­cles to the Unit­ed States to com­pete, when that for­eign ex­change could re­main in T&T.