Yet another State-funded project is feeling the pressure of the global economic slowdown.

The completion of Government’s multi-million dollar Tamana InTech Park at Wallerfield, which was due to house this country’s Information and Communications Technology future, is feeling the pinch of dwindling State revenue and work on the project is being stalled.

’The timeline for completion has been pushed back. Tamana InTech Park calls for significant investment which we do not have at this stage in the game,’ Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Mariano Browne, said yesterday at an international ICT symposium held at the Hilton Trinidad in St Ann’s.

He said the project (which was due to be completed near the end of 2010) required a significant investment of capital and as such it would be safe to say the decision to scale the park down has been taken.

Insiders said the project was supposed to cost just over $500 million. The park was to house an array of international information technology companies and help the Government in its mandate to develop a competitive onshore business environment, as well as form the background for a Caribbean ICT cluster or business hub. It will be the only science and information technology park within the West Indies and will also house the headquarters of the University of Trinidad and Tobago, and was to be done in several stages.

’We have to develop other things in parallel, but we have not abandoned the park idea, it is simply going to be delayed. It is meant to be an innovative business centre, with many elements,’ Browne said, adding Government cannot do ’the park’, which is going to be a real estate development, to have it on its hands doing nothing.

Insiders have said many of the companies plugged to take up occupancy at the IT Park have pulled out or cannot afford to sign on to any expansion projects at this time.