State must help local industries

This band’s leaders were proud to promote the fact that all the chocolate used in its costumery was imported. In fact, it appeared to be a major selling point to its prospective clientele.

It appears to me that Trinidad has a vibrant cocoa industry and a budding chocolate industry.

The sense that one has is that the chocolate industry is trying very hard to find a market in Trinidad.

Its efforts are meeting resistance of the very kind exemplified by the Carnival band referred to, where locals go abroad to find the very product that is so readily available locally while local producers struggle to find foreign markets.

The State owes an obligation to local producers, agriculturists and manufacturers to assist in bringing products and markets together, thus ensuring the viability of local enterprise, and encouraging small business owners to develop their products to world standards.

The benefits that would be derived from such support would contribute immensely to the country’s balance of payments problems.

Karan Ma-habirsingh Carapichaima