In­vesTT will be pro­mot­ing eTecK’s Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate as a prime lo­ca­tion for busi­ness­es want­i­ng to ac­cess Latin Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can mar­kets at a two-day busi­ness sum­mit sched­uled to start in Ecuador to­mor­row.

"In­vesTT Lim­it­ed, in keep­ing with its man­date to at­tract for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, will show­case T&T’s in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties at the XV Chi­na LAC Ecuador 2022 Busi­ness Sum­mit in Guayaquil, Ecuador dur­ing De­cem­ber 14 and 15," a re­lease from In­vesTT has stat­ed.

"The an­nu­al Sum­mit is not­ed as the most im­por­tant busi­ness event be­tween com­pa­nies from Chi­na and Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries," a re­lease from In­vesTT has stat­ed.

Key among In­vesTT’s fo­cus will be the pro­mo­tion of e TecK’s Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate as a prime lo­ca­tion for busi­ness­es want­i­ng to ac­cess Latin Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can mar­kets as well as those fo­cused on trad­ing to and from Chi­na. Tar­get­ed sec­tors will be Man­u­fac­tur­ing, Lo­gis­tics & Dis­tri­b­u­tion as well as Agri-busi­ness.

In­vesTT’s pres­i­dent, Sek­ou Al­leyne ex­plains - “Chi­na LAC Ecuador 2022 is an ide­al fo­rum to pro­mote the op­por­tu­ni­ties at Phoenix Park to Latin Amer­i­can and Chi­nese com­pa­nies in one space. We’re po­si­tion­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as the gate­way for Chi­nese in­vestors to the North, South, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean mar­kets via the strength of this coun­try’s ex­ist­ing trade re­la­tion­ship with both re­gions.”

He fur­ther high­light­ed that T&T is Chi­na’s largest trad­ing part­ner in the Eng­lish speak­ing Caribbean and for­eign pol­i­cy is a top pri­or­i­ty for Chi­na.

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon will al­so at­tend the con­fer­ence vir­tu­al­ly as a pan­elist for the dis­cus­sion on Day 2 en­ti­tled ‘Unim­ped­ed Trade con­nec­tiv­i­ty, fi­nan­cial co­op­er­a­tion and in­fra­struc­ture.’

In­vesTT’s team aims to se­cure at least five in­vest­ment leads at this sum­mit in ad­di­tion to po­ten­tial site vis­its to T&T with­in the en­su­ing months.

Out of the 12 com­pa­nies al­ready con­firmed to es­tab­lish op­er­a­tions at e TecK’s Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, two of them are Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies – Sum­mit Lug­gage and Do­care Quanzhou Hy­gien­ic Prod­uct Com­pa­ny. Busi­ness­es lo­cat­ed at the Es­tate will ben­e­fit from the prox­im­i­ty to the in­ter­na­tion­al Port of Point Lisas, low en­er­gy costs, ac­cess to built-in 5G in­fra­struc­ture as well as at­trac­tive in­cen­tives un­der the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Act up­on its full procla­ma­tion.

In­vesTT is the na­tion­al In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency (IPA) of T&T and em­ploys a proac­tive strat­e­gy to at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment de­spite glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ties. With bor­ders re­opened, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote the coun­try’s in­vest­ment po­ten­tial at in-per­son in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness events such as the XV Chi­na LAC is once again a po­tent tool in In­vesTT’s ar­se­nal of in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion strate­gies.

For the fis­cal year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 2022, In­vesTT fa­cil­i­tat­ed $486.3Mn in lo­cal and for­eign in­vest­ments, rep­re­sent­ing a 70 per cent in­crease from the pri­or year and a dou­bling of its tar­gets.

These re­sults equate close­ly with In­vesTT’s 3-year av­er­age of $400Mn/yr in in­vest­ments fa­cil­i­tat­ed pre-pan­dem­ic (2016 to 2018). Out of the to­tal in­vest­ments fa­cil­i­tat­ed for Fis­cal 2022, 29 per cent rep­re­sents for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.