THA hands out $566,000 to Tobago entrepreneurs

The THA on Friday handed over several cheques totalling TT $566,000.00 to the first five successful applicants under its Enterprise Assistance Funds (EAF) programme.

The THA has allocated some $2.3 million dollars towards assisting persons with sound business ideas, but who did not have the means to access funds from the bank to become entrepeneurs. THA Secretary for Enterprise Development, Neil Wilson, advised the entrepeneurs that it was critical that they placed special emphasis on the way in which they interacted with their customers. “If you don’t interact properly with people you can be sure that your business will fail. I am imploring all of you to make sure that as you go about your business, with a human face and the same way that we are trying to help you, you ought to try to help your customers.” Wilson said that he expected to be handing out many more cheques as there were several other applications being reviewed by its (THA) Business Development Unit. He explained, however, that in order for an applicant to qualify for an EAF loan, the business “has to have a good chance of success” and the applicant must show total commitment to the project as would be determined during interviews. “Even if it is just a question of training our people to do business properly, if we get 50 to 60 percent success, in fact I hope it would be a lot greater than that, we would have achieved what we set out to do.  To make our people self reliant and self sufficient,” Wilson reasoned.