To fos­ter greater trade ties with its Cari­com coun­tries, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) will be host­ing a pri­vate sec­tor del­e­ga­tion on a trade mis­sion to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da from to­day to De­cem­ber 1, 2023.

The mis­sion will be led by Dr Mahin­dra Ramdeen, the CEO of TTMA and will com­prise 14 com­pa­nies with more than 20 peo­ple in at­ten­dance from var­i­ous sec­tors in­clu­sive of trans­porta­tion, ship­ping and lo­gis­tics, print­ing and pack­ag­ing, bank­ing and fi­nance, ap­par­el and safe­ty wear, chem­i­cals and non-metallics, con­struc­tion and build­ing mat­ters, food and bev­er­age and oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­lat­ed in­dus­tries.

Not­ing that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da is a ma­jor trad­ing part­ner for T&T, the TTMA said some of the main ex­ports from this coun­try to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da in­clude bev­er­ages, toi­let pa­per, flour, ce­re­als, to­bac­co, ice-cream, toma­to ketchup and many oth­ers.

For the pe­ri­od 2020 to 2022, T&T has been a net ex­porter to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, with trade sur­plus­es be­ing record­ed over the pe­ri­od, the TTMA said, adding that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has con­sis­tent­ly been a top mar­ket with­in Cari­com for this coun­try’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

“Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the at­trac­tion of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da mar­ket, and with An­tigua and Bar­bu­da be­ing a fel­low Cari­com mem­ber state, there are many op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist through the im­port and ex­port of non-en­er­gy prod­ucts be­tween both mar­kets.

“It should al­so be not­ed the in­creas­ing of num­ber of T&T vis­i­tors in­to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da due to the dy­nam­ic tourism sec­tor of the coun­try. We be­lieve the vis­its of these will fur­ther im­prove mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing, re­in­force bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion, and strength­en the trade and busi­ness ties be­tween our coun­tries,” the TTMA added.

It added that the trade mis­sion to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da is a key project un­der the ex­port boost­er ini­tia­tive, which is a strate­gic ini­tia­tive of T&T and geared to­wards in­creas­ing the val­ue of all non-en­er­gy ex­ports over the next three years.