Rapheal John-Lall

Rus­sia has con­tributed to Caribbean debt re­lief and will con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of T&T and the rest of the re­gion, Russ­ian Am­bas­sador to T&T Niko­lay Smirnov said in a state­ment to the T&T Guardian.

Smirnov, a non-res­i­dent am­bas­sador, said many Russ­ian com­pa­nies are in­ter­est­ed in do­ing busi­ness in T&T and for the first half of 2015 trade be­tween the two coun­tries stood US$126 mil­lion.

"Rus­sia has con­tributed to debt re­lief of such Caribbean coun­tries as Cu­ba, Guyana and Grena­da. The agree­ment with Grena­da on re­lief of the debt amount­ing to US$266,667 was signed in No­vem­ber 2015 in Paris," he said.He said that the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion con­tributed to the Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) Spe­cial Fund and over the last four years, its ag­gre­gate sup­port to­taled US$20 mil­lion.

Smirnov, whose com­ments came as the fourth meet­ing be­tween the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment part­ners took place in George­town, Guyana, said the Russ­ian-Cari­com part­ner­ship was formed in 2010 with the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing which es­tab­lished a Mech­a­nism for Po­lit­i­cal Di­a­logue and Co-op­er­a­tion.

It is aimed at pro­mot­ing in­ter­ac­tion and ex­changes in the eco­nom­ic, trade, fi­nan­cial, in­vest­ment, tech­no­log­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal spheres as well as ex­changes and train­ing in the fields of cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, health­care, sports, youth de­vel­op­ment and tourism.Rus­sia has al­so pro­vid­ed as­sis­tance in oth­er ar­eas.

"In ad­di­tion to mon­e­tary as­sis­tance to Caribbean coun­tries, Rus­sia has do­nat­ed med­ical peri­na­tal equip­ment to Grena­da, and St Vin­cent and The Grenadines.

"It is in­stalled and suc­cess­ful­ly used in St George's and Kingstown hos­pi­tals," the am­bas­sador said.

"In view of the grow­ing threat of pan­dem­ic virus­es, the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion con­tin­ues re­search to cre­ate counter Zi­ka, dengue, chikun­gun­ya vac­cines. It has de­vel­oped ef­fec­tive counter Ebo­la vac­cines and opened an Ebo­la fight­ing cen­tre in Guinea, Africa.

"We view Caribbean coun­tries as equal part­ners and are ready to strength­en trade and com­mer­cial co­op­er­a­tion, in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, stu­dent, youth ex­changes."