Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon met with a Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion from the city of Taizhou on Fri­day in a bid to build greater trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tions with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a news re­lease, the Min­istry of Trade said the Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion was led by Miao Weilun, Deputy Sec­re­tary of the Taizhou Mu­nic­i­pal Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na.

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon said the meet­ing un­der­scored the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment to pro­mote and fa­cil­i­tate trade and in­vest­ment with Chi­na, and recog­nised the im­por­tance of 2024, which rep­re­sent­ed 50 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries.

She said the in­ter­est by Taizhou of­fi­cials was just a re­fec­tion of pre­vi­ous ben­e­fits ex­pe­ri­enced by Chi­nese in­vest­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Gopee-Scoon not­ed the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic strength, po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, high­ly ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion, new in­vest­ment-friend­ly poli­cies such as the up­com­ing Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones (SEZ) regime, and tar­iff-free ac­cess to sev­er­al mar­kets through­out North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, in­clud­ing Cari­com.

Weilun said that the del­e­ga­tion had vis­it­ed the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, and was im­pressed by the coun­try’s abun­dant nat­ur­al re­sources, lev­el of de­vel­op­ment and great po­ten­tial.

He un­der­scored Taizhou’s high de­gree of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and their will­ing­ness to ex­pand in­to new and ex­cit­ing mar­kets such as T&T.

Taizhou’s ex­ports to Trinidad and To­ba­go com­prise large­ly of plas­tic prod­ucts, fur­ni­ture, knives, steel struc­tures, pumps and ve­hi­cle parts, while Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­ports are dom­i­nat­ed by met­als.

Oth­er of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try present in­clud­ed per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ran­dall Karim, deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ava Ma­habir-Dass and. Wang Tao, coun­try man­ag­er, Bei­jing Con­struc­tion En­gi­neer­ing Group T&T.

In last Thurs­day’s Busi­ness Guardian, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try dis­closed that the to­tal con­tract sum for the de­vel­op­ment of the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $688 mil­lion. To date, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $641.33 mil­lion has been dis­bursed to the con­trac­tor.  

“The re­main­ing sum is large­ly of re­ten­tion mon­ey, for, among oth­er things, the se­cur­ing of ten in­vestors by the con­trac­tor to op­er­ate at the PPIE,” Gopee-Scoon added.

The in­dus­tri­al es­tate’s con­trac­tor is the Bei­jing Con­struc­tion En­gi­neer­ing Group (BCEG).