Air­craft parts man­u­fac­tur­ing, main­te­nance, and train­ing could soon form part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­dus­tri­al mix, ac­cord­ing to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Au­thor­i­ty (SEZA), Stephen De Gannes.

Speak­ing at a break­fast sem­i­nar host­ed by the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce on Wednes­day, De Gannes said the avi­a­tion sec­tor holds promise un­der the coun­try’s evolv­ing Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones (SEZ) strat­e­gy.

“If there is a com­pa­ny that would like to come in­to Trinidad and maybe use our lo­ca­tion to man­u­fac­ture parts for the Caribbean for air­craft — and they get cer­ti­fied — that would be some­thing we would want to en­cour­age,” De Gannes told at­ten­dees. He al­so iden­ti­fied the Cam­den airstrip in Cou­va as a po­ten­tial site for de­vel­op­ing avi­a­tion-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty.

The SEZ frame­work, gov­erned by the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Act of 2022, aims to at­tract in­vest­ment in a range of pri­or­i­ty sec­tors by of­fer­ing in­vestor-friend­ly in­cen­tives. These in­clude a 15% cor­po­rate tax rate and ex­emp­tions from cus­toms du­ties, VAT, prop­er­ty tax, and stamp du­ty.

De Gannes said the Au­thor­i­ty is tar­get­ing sev­er­al in­dus­tries with­in SEZs — in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and as­sem­bly, mar­itime and avi­a­tion ser­vices, agri­cul­ture and agro-pro­cess­ing, fish­ing and fish pro­cess­ing, ICT, med­ical tourism, re­new­able en­er­gy, and busi­ness process out­sourc­ing (BPO).

While De Gannes pre­sent­ed SEZs as a key dri­ver of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­port-led growth, Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber Pres­i­dent De­o­raj Ma­hase used the event to raise long-stand­ing con­cerns from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Chief among them were the con­tin­ued lack of for­eign ex­change and cus­toms and ex­cise de­lays, which he said con­tin­ue to sti­fle lo­cal en­ter­prise.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so re­ceived pre­sen­ta­tions from Char­tered Ac­coun­tant Amit Dass on tax­a­tion and Neal John­son on the re­quire­ments for OPR (Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The ses­sion un­der­scored both the op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by SEZs and the sys­temic bar­ri­ers still fac­ing in­vestors.