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Thursday, July 17, 2025

$6M in SME grants since September

by

PETER CHRISTOPHER
478 days ago
20240326
Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon presents Pius Edwards with a yachting grant at the minister’s Port-of-Spain office yesterday.

Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon presents Pius Edwards with a yachting grant at the minister’s Port-of-Spain office yesterday.

VASHTI SINGH

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Since Sep­tem­ber 2023, $6 mil­lion has been paid out by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try to 65 small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon re­vealed this dur­ing a grant dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny host­ed at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters at Nicholas Tow­er, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day as she pre­sent­ed grants to 37 re­cip­i­ents at the event.

Gopee-Scoon said, “The grant dis­tri­b­u­tion demon­strates the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port and com­mit­ment to eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion and ad­vances the coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion agen­da. The Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands the fi­nanc­ing chal­lenges of SMEs, and it is for this rea­son, the min­istry in­tro­duced var­i­ous in­cen­tives to sup­port such busi­ness­es.

“Through these fa­cil­i­ties, in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es can ac­cess fund­ing to trans­form, repo­si­tion and ex­pand their op­er­a­tions.”

Forty grants in to­tal were dis­trib­uted via var­i­ous pro­grammes in­clud­ing the Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (GFF), the Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (RDF), the Grant Fa­cil­i­ty for Mi­cro and Small En­ter­pris­es in the yacht­ing sec­tor, the Steel­pan Man­u­fac­tur­ing Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (SMGFF), the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive (EBI) and the Mu­sic Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Grant (MB­DG).

Gopee-Scoon al­so made a call for more busi­ness­es to tap in­to the fa­cil­i­ties avail­able to grow and ex­pand their busi­ness­es.

She said since the 2017 in­tro­duc­tion of the GFF, it has pro­vid­ed fund­ing to 38 SMEs with ac­cu­mu­lat­ed fund­ing and in­vest­ments of $8.05 mil­lion and $19.74 mil­lion re­spec­tive­ly.

She added the RDF, which fo­cus­es on new and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion, and ex­port-re­lat­ed prod­uct mod­i­fi­ca­tion, has seen 20 ben­e­fi­cia­ries to date at an ac­cu­mu­lat­ed val­ue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5.2 mil­lion.

The grant fa­cil­i­ty for mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es in the yacht­ing sec­tor, which was in­tro­duced to re­vi­talise the sec­tor fol­low­ing the de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fects of the COVID pan­dem­ic in 2022, has pro­vid­ed 109 ben­e­fi­cia­ries with fund­ing of over $2.5 mil­lion, the min­is­ter ex­plained while the SMGFF, which was launched in 2020, has pro­vid­ed nine busi­ness­es with ac­cu­mu­lat­ed fund­ing of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.2 mil­lion to date.

Michael Coop­er, pres­i­dent of lo­cal steel­band com­pa­ny Pan­land, said the SMGFF had pro­vid­ed im­mense sup­port to his com­pa­ny and oth­ers in the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty.

He said the fi­nan­cial sup­port paid out had been more than he had seen un­der any ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“It has al­lowed us to live much bet­ter, more as­sured. We had a much bet­ter plat­form. We have re­cruit­ed. We have dou­bled our staff and we are re­cruit­ing as you speak. Most of our busi­ness­es are in for­eign ex­change. We are on Ama­zon. We are train­ing again. We have done a tremen­dous amount of train­ing in this in­dus­try and we have re­sumed train­ing be­cause that is re­al­ly the back­bone of our in­dus­try,” Coop­er said as he en­cour­aged his peers to use the fa­cil­i­ty,

“I know that this has re­al­ly giv­en us a new life and we are to­tal­ly grate­ful on be­half of oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers in our in­dus­try who are re­al­ly be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the ben­e­fits and not be­ing fear­ful of the ap­pli­ca­tion process be­cause that can be in­tim­i­dat­ing,” he added.

Business Minister of Trade and IndustryInstagram


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