Tobago's new eco-industrial park attracts investment from a range of segments

As part of its policy of promoting economic diversification, the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) has been developing the Cove Eco-Industrial and Business Park (CEIBP), a 57-ha site operated by the THA-established private firm, Eco-Industrial Development Company of Tobago (E-IDCOT). The industrial park is intended to act as a catalyst for a wide range of renewable energy and economic diversification projects.

“We are focusing on developing small and micro-enterprises as a way, not only of diversifying the economy, but also reducing the amount of employment that is expected from the THA,” Tricia Beckles, sector development manager of the THA’s Business Development Unit (BDU), told OBG.

New Products

Shelly Ann Baptiste, an enterprise assistance fund manager at the THA’s BDU and a former director at E-IDCOT, told OBG that the company had just commissioned two new buildings in May 2016, known as multi-producer units (MPUs), to house and support small enterprises involved in agro-processing and other activities. The first tenants were involved in producing food, including seasoning and spices. E-IDCOT has also created two larger buildings that offer greater floor space. Initial tenants of these spaces include light industrial companies, such as a door manufacturer, a small metal fabrication unit, a manufacturer of safety garments and a company using locally sourced raw materials to make fruit juices. Two industrial tenants are already in place, including the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission, which has been operating a 64-MW duel-fuel generator at CEIBP since 2009, and the National Gas Company’s Tobago Natural Gas Receiving Facility, with current capacity to process 100m cu feet of gas per day.

Improved Incentives

In order to attract businesses to the park, a generous series of tax breaks and financial incentives are on offer. These include a 25% tax credit on chargeable small company profits, and an exemption on paying corporate tax on dividends and profits, and a value-added tax exemption for companies exporting 80% or more of their output. There are also tax holidays of up to 10 years available for manufacturers of products that use significant local inputs, export all their output or are capital-intensive businesses investing over TT$50m ($7.7m). “We already have one communications provider, a committed tenancy for a waste recycling plant and another service provider that will be establishing a communications platform. Right now we are evaluating about four additional prospects for the park,” Bernard Mitchell, CEO of E-IDCOT, told OBG.

Self-Sufficiency

While Mitchell noted there was some debate over the definition of success for E-IDCOT, he was focusing on first achieving financial self-sufficiency. In the longer term – perhaps a 20-year timeline – he hopes the park’s contribution to Tobago’s GDP will outweigh the combined value of the investments made to set it up. According to Mitchell, the park is seeking to attract tenants in six main sectors: ICT; agro-processing; light manufacturing; food and beverages; creative industries; and clean energy. The immediate focus was on agro-processing and ICT, with the two MPUs largely earmarked for agro-processors. Meanwhile, on the ICT front, the main task is to build a fibre-network across the whole park and the establishment of a Tier-3 data centre, he said. “Within the CEIBP we have a value proposition in terms of the park itself that is second to none in the Caribbean,” Mitchell told OBG. However, he recognised that this strongly positive message is, at least for the moment, somewhat constrained by the lack of modern container-handling port facilities on the island of Tobago. In Mitchell’s view, when that issue is addressed, the temporarily mixed messages about the CEIBP will become an unequivocally positive one for investors. In mid-2016 the THA was in talks with the Caribbean Development Bank for a feasibility study and collaboration on building a cargo port.