SCORING INVESTMENT GOALS

The Government-sponsored cultural contingent in Germany now is an attempt to provide Germans and the scores of visitors expected from several countries with a multi-ethnic blend of what we have to offer.

The group includes leading calypsonians, this year’s champion steel orchestra and dancers, among others. Nonetheless, the importance of a well-marketed cultural aperitif to the investment potential main course lies, even as it seeks to generate increased tourist traffic to TT, a stimulating of needed investor interest.

Presumably, there is a structured marketing approach, which even as it wins the additional tourists, sensitises potential investors from around the world as to where this country has reached, investment wise, and where it sees itself as heading.

Tourism and investment information booths should be set up at all of the cities where World Cup football matches will be played, rousing, sustaining and peaking interest in Trinidad and Tobago.

It is crucial that the country markets to specific investor audiences during the World Cup in Germany, showing them that we are not prepared to stand still.

We must hammer home that we have opened up and are opening up new industrial estates, even as we continue to move into parallel and other strategic areas of industrial development.

It is not enough, however, merely to market tourism and investment opportunities on a grand scale at the World Cup. There must be a continued heightened marketing thrust, including provision for follow through action via high powered trade missions to countries whose businessmen/women demonstrate a positive interest in what Trinidad and Tobago has to offer. Incentives for investments must be spelt out.

There is a need for this country to optimise the opportunities presented by the World Cup and seek to score not merely at football but in tourism expansion and investment as well.