Twenty-five lucky local firms will receive innovation financing as part of the Shaping the Future of Innovation project.
The Shaping the Future of Innovation project aims to push for transformation in the business and service sectors, create new export products, and generate jobs and foreign exchange while diversifying the local economy.
At an awards ceremony on Wednesday to recognise 25 successful applicants of the project’s fourth call, Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Planning, Economic Affairs and Development, Satee Boodoo, outlined some of the Ministry’s plans for the sector.
“We have to forge ahead with updated policy frameworks, clear strategies and initiatives. The challenge lies in accelerating the implementation of innovation, fostering deeper collaboration across all sectors, be it government, industry, or academia, and ensuring that our policies truly create an environment where innovation can flourish.”
Ambassador for the Delegation of the European Union, Peter Cavendish, said the EU is providing help to local innovators.
“Risk is the main one that we can assist with by reducing it, but there are other ways one’s products are established, developmental actors. We can help people get geographical indicator protection. Legally now, the steelpan and this country is protected by a geographical indicator, and the European Union gave advice on that. We also helped get protection for Trinitario chocolate, and we got protection for red Moruga rice.”
Meanwhile, the Inter-American Development Bank’s Country Representative for T&T, Julian Belgrave, noted that developing entrepreneurs requires engagement beyond the private sector.
“We think that these types of overtures are crucial. I don’t think that we will have the sort of sustainability in culturing innovation in the country, in Trinidad and Tobago, without the public sector being embedded in this whole view of innovation.”
Shaping the Future of Innovation is a collaborative effort of the Government through the Ministry of Planning, Economic Affairs and Development, in partnership with the European Union and the Inter-American Development Bank Lab, with the executing agency, the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI).