Paras Ra­moutar

Bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween T&T and In­dia dur­ing 2010-2011 amount­ed to US$140.75 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Ma­havir Bhard­waj, first sec­re­tary, eco­nom­ics and com­merce, In­di­an High Com­mis­sion.In an in­ter­view last Fri­day, Bhard­waj said that sev­er­al items con­sti­tute In­dia's ex­port bas­ket to T&T.

They in­clude: phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, iron and steel, rice and oth­er food­stuffs, chem­i­cals, cos­met­ics, gems and jew­el­ry, plas­tic prod­ucts, gar­ments, trans­porta­tion equip­ment, non-fer­rous met­als, sports goods, paints, footwear, car­pets and leather.

Items of ex­port from T&T in­clude scrap met­als, wood and wood prod­ucts, as­phalt,chem­i­cals and liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG)."Bi­lat­er­al trade re­la­tions be­tween In­dia and T&T have con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial. In­dia's ex­ports to this coun­try showed ex­po­nen­tial growth from US$8.8 mil­lion in 2001 to US$312.27 mil­lion in 2008-09. How­ev­er, trade fig­ures be­tween the two coun­tries for 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 have gone down prin­ci­pal­ly on ac­count of the glob­al re­ces­sion. T&T ex­ports to In­dia have shown a de­cline prin­ci­pal­ly be­cause of the short­fall in LNG ex­ports, and the econ­o­my hav­ing been se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the glob­al down­turn, which has led to a neg­a­tive rate of growth," Bhard­waj said.

"T&T ex­ports should in­crease with the Gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion in en­cour­ag­ing ex­ports be­yond Cari­com and South Amer­i­can mar­kets, as well as with the mis­sion's con­sis­tent ef­forts in en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness and in­vest­ments."

Trade agree­ments

The trade agree­ment signed be­tween In­dia and T&T in Jan­u­ary 1991 ac­cords most favoured na­tion (MFN) sta­tus to each oth­er. There is al­so dou­ble tax­a­tion avoid­ance agree­ment (DTAA) in place."T&T needs to work be­yond its im­me­di­ate neigh­bour­hood, and In­dia, be­ing the most favoured in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion glob­al­ly, could be pur­sued by T&T in­vestors."

Bhard­waj said that T&T of­fers good in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to In­di­an busi­ness­men. Pow­er sup­ply is abun­dant at rea­son­able cost."Op­por­tu­ni­ties abound in man­u­fac­tur­ing, in­clud­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing in the re­gion."New In­dia As­sur­ance has a T&T sub­sidiary, pro­vid­ing gen­er­al in­sur­ance. Life In­sur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion of In­dia has con­duct­ed pre­lim­i­nary sur­vey of the mar­ket. Bank of Bar­o­da has set up full-time bank­ing op­er­a­tions in Port-of-Spain in 2007, and, in Ju­ly 2009, opened branch­es in Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do, with fur­ther ex­pan­sion on the cards.

In­dia's Arcelor­Mit­tal is the largest ex­porter in T&T out­side the en­er­gy sec­tor and Es­sar Steel is in­tent on con­struct­ing a $1.7 bil­lion steel plant. Arcelor­Mit­tal al­so holds 50 per cent share in In­ter­com­mer­cial Bank Ltd with cor­re­spond­ing fa­cil­i­ties with ICI­CI Bank in In­dia. In­dia is ranked fourth for po­ten­tial in­vest­ment in T&T.

The Re­liance Group, which signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing in Ju­ly with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to in­vest US$1 bil­lion in a bi­tu­men-up­grad­er plant in Trinidad.