KEEPING THE COMPETITIVE EDGE

The R&D is a practical demonstration of Government’s expressed intention to support and sustain businesses in TT and follows in the footsteps of industrial giants, Japan and China Trade Minister Ken Valley has pointed out the pilot project has been allocated $2.5 million. Grants will be provided up to a maximum of $100,000 a company, or up to two-thirds of the R& D costs, with the beneficiary companies covering the remaining costs as their investments in the projects. In addition, the facility will seek to encourage business alliances through the allocation of grants up to a maximum of $200,000 per alliance, annually.

In turn, $50,000 grants will be made available for patent registration.

Government has determined it can no longer be content to leave the cost of vital research and development to the business sector, and must involve itself in an effort to assist in accelerating the growth of domestic businesses by ploughing back for the development of this sector part of the money it would have gained by way of taxation.

Imtiaz Hosein, acting President of the Business Development Company Limited (BDC), which will manage the project, has offered as the rationale for Government’s involvement that business people have traditionally focused their resources on plant and production.

As a result, they have found it difficult to set aside funding for R&D.

This initiative is in keeping with the move to keep the country away from a dependence on an energy and energy-based economy and an attempt to diversify the economy. As Valley stated, the facility would be a key factor in helping the non-energy manufacuring and service sectors “maintain their tremendous growth.”

We cannot sit back and allow the business sector to find its own way in an increasingly competitive world. In turn, TT, which has sustained more than 12 years of economic growth saw its manufacturing sector’s recorded growth rate stumble from the 2004 level of nine percent to 8.5 percent in 2005.

In today’s context of the threat of cheap imports which poses an uncomfortable challenge to our manufacturing sector, it is crucial that the country seeks to devise new strategies not only to defend this sector but to expand its growth. Hopefully, this research and development thrust will help push the manufacturing sector in the right direction.