Entrepreneurs showcase goods at Chaguanas pop-up market

By Shas­tri Boodan, Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

En­tre­pre­neurs were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their goods across Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Christ­mas sea­son, ac­cord­ing to Kadi­jah Ameen, Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. She spoke to Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day as her min­istry launched its Tin­sel and Tid­ings – Ch­agua­nas Edi­tion on the com­pound of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture at Narsa­loo Ra­maya Road.

Ameen said lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment is an in­te­gral part of stim­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my. “The pop-up mar­ket al­lows us in lo­cal gov­ern­ment un­der our new­ly formed LED unit (Lo­cal Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment) to get ar­ti­sans, cater­ers and so on from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to come and show­case their wares, to meet new clients and to have eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

She added that the three-day pop-up mar­ket at­tract­ed a large num­ber of mi­cro-en­tre­pre­neurs to the event and not­ed that sim­i­lar events are planned in oth­er re­gions. “The re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions would be col­lab­o­rat­ing with us, our LED of­fi­cers,” Ameen said. “It is up to the re­gion­al bod­ies to de­cide what they would want to pro­mote.”

“Lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment is part of the UNC’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery plan. When peo­ple think about eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery they think about the macro, like rev­enue from en­er­gy and dif­fer­ent places, and those play a cru­cial role as well, but very crit­i­cal is lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, where vil­lages and towns have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty that will stim­u­late their own econ­o­my with­in their com­mu­ni­ty.”

Ameen said the new­ly formed Lo­cal Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment unit is head­ed by Ali­cia Lovelace.

She added that many peo­ple do not need a hand­out, but rather a sys­tem that can sup­port what they do. She not­ed that this was the im­pe­tus for get­ting the LED unit rolling and said LED projects would be tai­lored to the needs of the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties.