Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says T&T is to re­ceive a 40 mil­lion Yuan (US$6.26m) grant from the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment. She re­vealed this fol­low­ing bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with Chi­nese Vice Pre­mier Wang Quis­han at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's yes­ter­day. He is in T&T for the an­nu­al Chi­na-Cari­com Eco­nom­ic and Trade Co­op­er­a­tion Fo­rum. Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not say what the mon­ey would be used for. Oth­er Gov­ern­ment sources said it was still to be de­ter­mined what projects the mon­ey would be used for but in­sist­ed that it would be for mu­tu­al­ly agreed ini­tia­tives.

She said the vis­it of the high-lev­el Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion was a recog­ni­tion of val­ue placed by Chi­na on trade with Cari­com mem­ber states. Among Cari­com lead­ers present for the lun­cheon were Guyana Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo, An­tigua/Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Bald­win Spencer, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing and Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Till­man Thomas. She said Chi­na of­fers Cari­com states an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to mar­ket them­selves as an ide­al des­ti­na­tion for leisure and busi­ness. She said T&T wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to co­op­er­ate with Chi­na in the ar­eas of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in fields such as bio-sci­ences, agri­cul­ture and food tech­nol­o­gy.

She al­so said that there was to be ex­pect­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween T&T's ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions and Chi­nese uni­ver­si­ties. She said T&T would es­tab­lish an em­bassy in Bei­jing, Chi­na. Not­ing that some T&T prod­ucts al­ready had ac­cess in the Chi­nese mar­kets, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said "We wel­come a greater pen­e­tra­tion of a wider va­ri­ety of our goods and ser­vices in­to the Chi­nese mar­ket." Wang was high in praise for the suc­cess of the on-go­ing fo­rum. He said it would au­gur well for both Chi­na and the Cari­com na­tions.