KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go has cel­e­brat­ed an­oth­er mile­stone in se­cur­ing the steel­pan as its own by at­tain­ing a ge­o­graph­i­cal in­di­ca­tor (GI) for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of steel­pans.

This is the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights for this coun­try to brand the in­stru­ment as its own. Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell made the an­nounce­ment at the in­au­gur­al World Steel­pan Con­fer­ence 2024 at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

The de­vel­op­ment comes ahead of World Steel­pan Day to­mor­row (Au­gust 11).

The min­is­ter said at­tain­ing the GI lo­cal­ly for the steel­pan al­so made his­to­ry as the great­est achieve­ment in in­tel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress, Mitchell said, “From 12 am, we re­ceived the news that an ap­pli­ca­tion for reg­is­tra­tion of a form of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty known as ge­o­graph­i­cal in­di­ca­tion has been ap­proved by the Trinidad and To­ba­go IP (In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty) of­fice. And to put this in­to some per­spec­tive, this is some­thing that we’ve been talk­ing about for 30 to 40 years. We even re­ceived ad­vice in some quar­ters that this sim­ply could not be done and to­day it has been done and the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty now re­sides with Pan Trin­ba­go for the ben­e­fit of steel­pan pro­duc­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Mitchell said France is known for its cham­pagne, the Swiss for its watch­es, the Scot­tish for whiskey, and now Trinidad and To­ba­go will for­ev­er be known for pro­duc­ing pre­mi­um qual­i­ty steel­pans.

“With the prop­er man­age­ment of the GI, we can guar­an­tee the world and the world will al­ways re­mem­ber, de­spite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of steel­pan and the man­u­fac­ture world­wide of steel­pan in var­i­ous coun­tries, the very best of steel­pans, the Rolls Royce of steel­pans will al­ways come from Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added.

Mitchell said all steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ers and pro­duc­ers will have the right to af­fix the GI brand­ing once they ap­ply the es­tab­lished stan­dards of pro­duc­tion.

While steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ers aren’t man­dat­ed to com­ply with the GI spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the min­is­ter wel­comed all steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ers and pro­duc­ers to grab the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their in­stru­ments brand­ed.

This was mu­sic to Pan Trin­ba­go’s ears, as its pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore said this mile­stone is go­ing to al­low for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to take off in a huge way.

Ram­sey-Moore said, “This is a big mo­ment for the coun­try, yet an­oth­er his­tor­i­cal day. As we look to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try, it is go­ing to play a ma­jor role for our pro­duc­ers in every­thing pan, not on­ly the in­stru­ment, but even the pan cas­es, the pan sticks and all things pan. The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is about to take off in a very pos­i­tive way. Hav­ing your in­stru­ments and every­thing pan brand­ed be­ing made in Trinidad and To­ba­go will def­i­nite­ly in­crease for­eign ex­change. The whole econ­o­my will boom from this ma­jor achieve­ment.”

She added that a GI com­mit­tee will be set up to de­ter­mine the cost of hav­ing pan prod­ucts brand­ed.

To­mor­row, the first World Steel­pan Fes­ti­val will cul­mi­nate with a se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple con­ven­tion­al and sin­glepan bands per­form­ing at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain.