T&T has con­clud­ed the first round of ne­go­ti­a­tions for a Par­tial-Scope Trade Agree­ment (PS­TA) be­tween this coun­try and Cu­raçao.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try said T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the first ne­go­ti­at­ing round took place over the pe­ri­od Ju­ly 17 to 18, 2024 in Cu­raçao.

It said the ne­go­ti­a­tion of a PS­TA with Cu­raçao is aligned with the T&T Trade Pol­i­cy 2019 to 2023: To­wards Sus­tain­able Eco­nom­ic Growth and Di­ver­si­ty (TTTP).

“Specif­i­cal­ly, goal five, which seeks growth in mar­ket share with­in tra­di­tion­al and non-tra­di­tion­al mar­kets through in­ter alia. in­creas­ing ex­port mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion by grow­ing ex­ist­ing mar­ket share, ex­plor­ing new mar­kets and prof­it op­por­tu­ni­ties, and im­prov­ing trade diplo­ma­cy and deep­en­ing re­gion­al­ism. Fur­ther, a PS­TA with Cu­raçao will al­low for the full util­i­sa­tion and ex­pan­sion of ex­ist­ing re­la­tions, in­clud­ing air trans­porta­tion,” the min­istry said.

At the open­ing of the round on Ju­ly 17, 2024, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said the com­mence­ment of the ne­go­ti­a­tions rep­re­sent­ed an­oth­er av­enue for fos­ter­ing clos­er diplo­mat­ic ties and co­op­er­a­tion on shared chal­lenges and a key mile­stone in clos­ing the 862-kilo­me­tre gap be­tween T&T and Cu­raçao.

She al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed Cu­raçao on be­com­ing an as­so­ciate mem­ber of Cari­com, which will pro­vide the coun­try with ben­e­fits such as par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion ini­tia­tives across var­i­ous sec­tors, eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, en­vi­ron­men­tal projects and so­cio-cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions this week, both coun­tries ad­vanced ne­go­ti­a­tions in the ar­eas of mar­ket ac­cess for goods, rules of ori­gin, ser­vices, le­gal and in­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues and dis­pute set­tle­ment and tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion.

The min­istry added Cu­raçao re­mains a valu­able trad­ing part­ner for this coun­try as T&T has main­tained favourable trade bal­ances with Cu­raçao in re­cent years. There has been mar­ket growth for prod­ucts such as pre­pared ce­re­als, mat­tress­es, pa­per prod­ucts, agri­cul­tur­al chem­i­cals, aer­at­ed bev­er­ages, wood­en fur­ni­ture and clean­ing prod­ucts.

T&T im­ports from Cu­raçao have al­so been in­creas­ing, which shows a grow­ing in­ter­est among do­mes­tic im­porters in hav­ing ac­cess to Cu­raçaoan prod­ucts.

The min­istry said in No­vem­ber 2023, an air ser­vices agree­ment was signed be­tween T&T and Cu­ra­cao, not­ing that this laid the plat­form for the mu­tu­al de­vel­op­ment of in­dus­tries and economies, fos­ter­ing cul­tur­al ex­changes and strength­en­ing com­mer­cial ties, along with oth­er ben­e­fits since it will al­low peo­ple to con­nect and meet more eas­i­ly.

It added ne­go­ti­a­tions will con­tin­ue with the sec­ond round tak­ing place in ear­ly Oc­to­ber 2024.