Gail Alexan­der

Chair­man of the Mit­subishi com­pa­ny Yuri­hiko Ko­ji­ma, among the Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter's del­e­ga­tion vis­it­ing T&T this week­end, will be dis­cussing with Gov­ern­ment its US$850 mil­lion petro­chem­i­cal in­vest­ment in T&T.Fi­nal de­ci­sion on this is ex­pect­ed by year end, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter WIn­ston Dook­er­an added at yes­ter­day's week­ly Gov­ern­ment me­dia brief­ing.

He out­lined plans for Japan­ese PM Shin­zo Abe's vis­it which takes place over Ju­ly 27 to 28 and in­cludes a Japan-Cari­com sum­mit next Mon­day.Dook­er­an said most of the Cari­com lead­ers will be here this week­end for the sum­mit.

Abe's vis­it is part of a Latin Amer­i­can tour and will be the first time a Japan­ese leader will vis­it the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and T&T. The vis­it is in the con­text of the T&T/ Japan's diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions and al­so marks Cari­com/Japan Friend­ship Year and the 20th an­niver­sary of the Cari­com-Japan con­ven­tion on bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions.Dook­er­an said Ko­ji­ma will be among a large con­tin­gent of pri­vate sec­tor of­fi­cials ac­com­pa­ny­ing Abe. He added Ko­ji­ma will al­so be ac­com­pa­nied by 17 of­fi­cials who will hold talks with gov­ern­ment on in­vest­ment.Dook­er­an said bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions in­clude ex­am­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing a ma­jor in­vest­ment from Mit­subishi, one of the lead­ing Japan­ese com­pa­nies in the field of petro­chem­i­cals. In March 2013, Gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to a project de­vel­op­ment agree­ment with the Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion and lo­cal part­ner Massy Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, for a Methanol to Di­methyl Ether (DME) Plant.

He said the com­pa­ny has over the last 18 months been ex­am­in­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing a ma­jor in­vest­ment in La Brea to ex­pand on T&T's petro­chem­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty."In this re­spect, dis­cus­sions will con­tin­ue, but don't ex­pect a fi­nal de­ci­sion on this un­til per­haps the end of the year," he added.

The petro­chem­i­cal plant is ex­pect­ed to at­tract more than $850 mil­lion US dol­lars in for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, pro­vide 3,000 jobs dur­ing con­struc­tion and 180 per­ma­nent jobs. The project will al­so act as a cat­a­lyst for in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment of the south-west­ern penin­su­la, and has po­ten­tial to re­duce the sub­sidy on diesel fu­el.Al­so to be dis­cussed dur­ing the up­com­ing Japan­ese vis­it is tech­ni­cal co-op­er­a­tion in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, fish­eries and wa­ter man­age­ment.Much tech­ni­cal talk had al­ready tak­en place on the is­sue in the last year and will be brought to the fore for fi­nal con­sid­er­a­tion.To be dis­cussed al­so, will be trade be­tween the glob­al south and the world econ­o­my with new gui­dle­lines to fa­cil­i­tate suc­cess­ful in­te­gra­tion of this.