GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Three weeks ago, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon opened a T&T booth at the sixth Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po (CI­IE) in Shang­hai in Chi­na.

This marked one in a se­ries of ini­tia­tives as this coun­try and Chi­na con­tin­ue to ex­plore new av­enues of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit through in­creased trade and in­vest­ments be­tween the coun­tries.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the Trade Min­istry to get fur­ther in­sights on T&T’s grow­ing and evolv­ing eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship with Chi­na.

The min­istry not­ed that T&T cur­rent­ly stands as Chi­na’s largest trade part­ner in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, lever­ag­ing its po­si­tion to pro­vide a plat­form for Chi­nese firms to ac­cess the wider North and Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets.

This coun­try is al­so one of Chi­na’s longest-stand­ing part­ners in the re­gion, ex­tend­ing a diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship that was for­malised be­tween the coun­tries al­most 50 years ago in 1974.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, this re­la­tion­ship has pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant re­turns for the lo­cal econ­o­my as to­tal ex­ports to Chi­na have grown ex­po­nen­tial­ly, in­creas­ing by 44 per cent from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.18 bil­lion in 2021 to $1.7 bil­lion in 2022 alone.

Ex­ports com­prised pri­mar­i­ly en­er­gy and en­er­gy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts with the top two ex­ports-methanol and liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas-to­geth­er val­ued at more than 140 times that of all oth­er ex­ports to Chi­na.

Al­though en­er­gy prod­ucts dom­i­nate the trade re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries, there ex­ist nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties for the sup­ply of non-en­er­gy prod­ucts and ser­vices to the Chi­nese mar­ket, in­clud­ing co­coa, sauces (in­clud­ing pep­per sauce), choco­lates, rums, bit­ters, teas and oth­er lo­cal­ly-made prod­ucts. As a re­sult, there has been a steady in­crease in non-en­er­gy ex­ports to Chi­na in re­cent years, with the ex­cep­tion of 2021 (due to re­stric­tion in trade of scrap met­al).

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, to re­in­force this mo­men­tum and fur­ther strength­en the eco­nom­ic ties be­tween the coun­tries, Gopee-Scoon’s re­cent vis­it to Chi­na in­clud­ed a se­ries of meet­ings and pro­mo­tion­al events, in­clud­ing the 16th Chi­na-Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean (LAC) Busi­ness Sum­mit in Bei­jing, the Sixth Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port-Ex­po in Shang­hai and a pro­mo­tion­al in­vest­ment tour of Jiang­su province.

This year’s Chi­na-LAC Busi­ness Sum­mit themed, “Open In­no­va­tion, Shared De­vel­op­ment,” fo­cused on the fol­low­ing four ar­eas: dig­i­tal econ­o­my, agri­cul­ture, cul­tur­al tourism and the green econ­o­my.

The sum­mit took place from No­vem­ber 2 to 3, 2023 and com­prised an open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, a ple­nary ses­sion, par­al­lel meet­ings on the four fo­cal ar­eas and var­i­ous con­cur­rent ac­tiv­i­ties.

Over 1,000 peo­ple at­tend­ed the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny and ple­nary ses­sion on day one of the sum­mit, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, busi­ness­peo­ple, ex­perts, schol­ars and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions from Chi­na and 26 Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries.

Speak­ers rep­re­sent­ing the LAC re­gion were Ir­faan Ali, pres­i­dent of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana, who par­tic­i­pat­ed vir­tu­al­ly; and Ana Ibáñez, vice-pres­i­dent of the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) among oth­ers.

Gopee-Scoon de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress on day two of the sum­mit, ad­dress­ing the strong and grow­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween Chi­na and LAC coun­tries at the Chi­na-LAC Think Tanks Co­op­er­a­tion Di­a­logue Ses­sion. She un­der­scored the strong con­nec­tion be­tween T&T and Chi­na, out­lin­ing the ad­vances of key projects such as the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PPIE) and the new Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones (SEZ) regime.

She al­so de­scribed the event as “an op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss trade and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion,” but al­so one “in which we can mo­bilise the nec­es­sary re­sources and ul­ti­mate­ly ac­tion them.”

Dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, bi­lat­er­al trade and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion agen­cies re­leased the “Chi­na-LAC Busi­ness Co­op­er­a­tion Bei­jing Ini­tia­tive,” which aims to pro­mote co­op­er­a­tion in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my, agri­cul­ture, cul­ture and tourism, as well as the green econ­o­my, while build­ing clos­er ties be­tween Chi­na and LAC coun­tries.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the CI­IE is one of the world’s largest plat­forms for strength­en­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion in trade and in­vest­ment be­tween the world and Chi­na.

In 2018, Gopee-Scoon led the del­e­ga­tion to the in­au­gur­al CI­IE.

This year, she de­liv­ered a keynote ad­dress at the par­al­lel ses­sion, “New Mar­kets, New Co-op­er­a­tion, New En­gines,” un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion in suc­cess­ful­ly pen­e­trat­ing new mar­kets like Chi­na.

This event was host­ed by Ori­en­tal In­ter­na­tion­al Hold­ings, one of the largest im­port/ex­port com­pa­nies in Shang­hai.

The min­is­ter and a team of min­istry of­fi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of in­vesTT al­so spent time pro­mot­ing the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PPIE) to stake­hold­ers in Chi­na.

The PPIE, which is due to be com­mis­sioned in ear­ly 2024, pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal and for­eign di­rect op­er­a­tions in man­u­fac­tur­ing, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion, ware­hous­ing, as well as emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies.

In ad­di­tion to the PPIE, new eco­nom­ic spaces such as the Dow Vil­lage In­dus­tri­al Park, which has a to­tal area of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 147 acres, have al­so been iden­ti­fied for de­vel­op­ment to ac­com­mo­date ad­di­tion­al in­vestors.

Since Sep­tem­ber 2019, the T&T Em­bassy in Bei­jing, Chi­na has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bei­jing Con­struc­tion En­gi­neer­ing Group (BCEG) and in­vesTT to or­gan­ise busi­ness pro­mo­tion events across Chi­na to high­light ten­an­cy op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T to Chi­nese busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with cus­tomers in North and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Provinces where these ac­tiv­i­ties have been held in­clude Guang­dong, Zhe­jiang, Fu­jian, Guizhou, and Shan­dong provinces. Com­ing out of these ac­tiv­i­ties, sev­er­al po­ten­tial leads for the PPIE have been iden­ti­fied, lead­ing to the Dong­guan Sum­mit Lug­gage be­ing the first firm to set up op­er­a­tions at the PPIE in mid-2023.

This month, the min­is­ter to­geth­er with in­vesTT par­tic­i­pat­ed in pro­mo­tion­al events in the cities of Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou, in Jiang­su province, which at­tract­ed a to­tal of al­most 100 in­ter­est­ed in­vestors and ex­porters.

Al­so, ear­li­er in April, the first ever Chi­na (Zhe­jiang) T&T Trade Fair was held at the Trinci­ty Busi­ness Dis­trict.

Gopee-Scoon said that she hoped the event will both ex­pand the mar­kets for lo­cal­ly pro­duced prod­ucts, as well as en­cour­age more Chi­nese firms to set up op­er­a­tions in this coun­try.

Fu­ture TT-Chi­na re­la­tions

As next year marks 50 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Chi­na, the gov­ern­ments of both coun­tries in­tend to mark this sig­nif­i­cant event through joint com­mem­o­ra­tive ac­tiv­i­ties that show­case cul­tures, peo­ples and his­to­ry and al­so boost the ever­grow­ing and evolv­ing eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween both coun­tries.