OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Ma­rine Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MSATT) is dis­ap­point­ed with the bud­get as it says noth­ing in it is ben­e­fi­cial to the cruis­ers and yacht­ing sec­tor.

Vice pres­i­dent of MSATT Jesse James said the in­dus­try was a “low-hang­ing fruit” for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­tract for­eign ex­change and cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the skilled and un­skilled.

He said the on­ly men­tion he saw was a brief state­ment about an eco­nom­ic zone in Ch­aguara­mas, but there was no fur­ther dis­cus­sion on it.

“We were dis­ap­point­ed that the ma­rine ser­vices and yacht­ing in­dus­tries in Ch­aguara­mas were not ad­dressed in the bud­get. What I would like to em­pha­sise is that this in­dus­try doesn’t re­quire a large fi­nan­cial in­jec­tion to thrive.

“The sit­u­a­tion in Ch­aguara­mas is what we would call a very low-hang­ing fruit that the Gov­ern­ment is strug­gling to cap­i­talise on. While they’re fo­cused on bal­anc­ing the bud­get and pos­si­bly bor­row­ing to do so, this op­por­tu­ni­ty in Ch­aguara­mas is read­i­ly avail­able. It could eas­i­ly be lever­aged to gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change, cre­ate jobs—both skilled and un­skilled—and pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits with min­i­mal in­vest­ment,” he said.

“I have to say Min­is­ter (Paula) Gopee-Scoon has been cham­pi­oning this sec­tor and do­ing her very best. They re­cent­ly launched a train­ing pro­gramme aimed at equip­ping young peo­ple with var­i­ous skills and ser­vices, high­light­ing the im­mense po­ten­tial in this in­dus­try. There’s a clear op­por­tu­ni­ty here, and with con­tin­ued fo­cus, it can great­ly ben­e­fit the econ­o­my.”

James said Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er co­or­di­nat­ing with var­i­ous agen­cies like port health and stream­lin­ing the process for cruis­ers ar­riv­ing in Trinidad. This, he said, would make it eas­i­er for them to ac­cess the coun­try and in turn boost the sec­tor.

On Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert spoke about the digi­ti­sa­tion of im­mi­gra­tion, but MSATT said that al­ready hap­pens thanks to the Sail­Clear sys­tem.

Sail­Clear is an op­tion­al ser­vice avail­able for use by yachts and oth­er plea­sure craft op­er­a­tors who wish to sub­mit their Cus­toms de­c­la­ra­tions in the form of elec­tron­ic no­ti­fi­ca­tions, pri­or to ar­rival in coun­tries where the sys­tem is avail­able.