NEDCO rebrands May 1st

The National Entrepreneurship Development Company Limited (NEDCO) is currently going through a rebranding and restructuring exercise which will come to an end by the end of April. This was disclosed yesterday by NEDCO’s Chairman Clarry Benn.

“Come May 1st, 2018, there will be a newly minted NEDCO which will be geared toward creating a sustainable, self-reliant, process-driven, socio-economic oriented, lean entrepreneurial development institution.”

“This we see as being consistent with, and is deemed a pre-requisite for, the successful execution of the new mandate the Government of Trinidad and Tobago through our line Ministry has outlined for NEDCO,” he said.

Benn was speaking at the eighth annual Business Development Seminar and Expo entitled, “The Role of Entrepreneurship and Trade in Economic Development: With Reference to TT” at the University of the Southern Caribbean (USC), Maracas, St Joseph.

He said NEDCO is putting the finishing touches on the document to be forwarded to their line minister of Ministry of Labour and Small Enterprise Development during the course of this week.

“While I am not at liberty to disclose the contents of the plan at this stage, I think I can disclose to you that one of the components of the new mandate given to NEDCO is the establishment of partnerships with public sector and other non-governmental organisations in the development and implementation of small enterprise development programmes.”

“I therefore give notice here that one of the pillars on which the trust of the ‘New NEDCO’ will be built and will be through tertiary level institutions, which can be urged to encourage students to create, to invent, to innovate in the production of goods and services which in themselves can stimulate sustained economic activity,” he said.

Benn said the new NEDCO will be challenging institutions such as the USC and other tertiary educational institutions to foster and promote the “gospel of entrepreneurship” particularly among the student body.

He said NEDCO has observed a quiet but effective change in the thinking of tertiary institutional graduates who are being driven by the current economic realities which basically demand of graduates to become self-reliant, and financially self-sufficient.

“The self-employment option is a very attractive option in Trinidad and Tobago at this time. We at NEDCO are witnessing a cadre of young graduates who are establishing themselves as entrepreneurs with many of them performing extremely well notwithstanding domestic socio-economic environment,” Benn said.