Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Ka­ma Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day Gov­ern­ment has signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) to restart a long-idled steel mill, a move he says will gen­er­ate an es­ti­mat­ed US$1.5 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, while cre­at­ing a mar­ket for every tonne of scrap iron and dis­card­ed tyres pro­duced in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T’s (PSOTT) “Road To Trans­for­ma­tion” meet­ing held in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day, Ma­haraj said the agree­ment was signed with a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, rep­re­sent­ing an ini­tial US$50 mil­lion in­vest­ment that is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand to US$150 mil­lion.

He said the project would re­vive one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant in­dus­tri­al as­sets af­ter years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty.