Jesse Ramdeo

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali will be cast­ing his gaze at the new vi­sion for agri­cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the re­gion while here for the next few days.

Ali, who ar­rived in the coun­try yes­ter­day, will not on­ly be as­sess­ing the agri­cul­ture sec­tor but al­so the po­ten­tial for growth and de­vel­op­ment.

Guyana is re­spon­si­ble for agri­cul­ture in Cari­com’s qua­si-cab­i­net.

Yes­ter­day’s heat on­ly added fur­ther warmth to the wel­com­ing of Dr Ali’s del­e­ga­tion for their of­fi­cial state vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Lin­ing the tar­mac of the south ter­mi­nal at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port were mem­bers of the De­fence Force, Reg­i­ment, Coast Guard, Air Guard and De­fence Force Re­serves, who greet­ed Ali and his del­e­gates with a cer­e­mo­ni­al guard of ho­n­our.

A 21-gun salute al­so added to the flair of the cer­e­mo­ny.

Act­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters re­ceived Ali, who is ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po, and his fam­i­ly.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne de­scribed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both na­tions as pos­i­tive and looked for­ward to deep­en­ing ties.

The Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum Ex­po 2 runs from Au­gust 19-21 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. It is aimed at trans­form­ing agri­cul­ture through in­no­va­tion and in­vest­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it seeks to rev­o­lu­tionise the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in T&T and by ex­ten­sion, across Cari­com mem­ber states. Em­pha­sis will be placed on the use of tech­nol­o­gy to mod­ernise cur­rent agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices, in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy and im­prove safe­ty across the sec­tor.

Pres­i­dent Ali was sched­uled to at­tend a func­tion at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, last evening, and he will lay a wreath at Memo­r­i­al Park in Port-of-Spain, be­fore meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to­day.

Be­fore he left for Trinidad ear­li­er, Ali told Guyana me­dia that Dr Row­ley had sig­nalled an in­ter­est in join­ing the pro­posed South Amer­i­can nat­ur­al gas en­er­gy cor­ri­dor, al­so known as the Ar­co Norte.

“The Prime Min­is­ter and I, in our dis­cus­sion, dis­cussed this and the Prime Min­is­ter has ex­pressed Trinidad’s will­ing­ness to work with Guyana and Suri­name in the de­vel­op­ment of our gas re­source and look at oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties in the en­er­gy sec­tor,” Ali was re­port­ed as say­ing be­fore his de­par­ture from Guyana.

Suri­name, Guyana and Brazil are forg­ing ahead with the Ar­co Norte project, which pro­pos­es to build a pipeline to sup­ply gas to a mas­sive Brazil­ian elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty.

Ali al­so said the talks with Row­ley in T&T are ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on in­te­grat­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors, in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment, agri­cul­ture and food sys­tems of the coun­tries.