Venezuela is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive its first ship­ment of prod­ucts from T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers to­day, two days af­ter the sign­ing of bi­lat­er­al com­mer­cial agree­ments witj the Cor­po­ra­cion Vene­zolana de Com­er­cia Ex­te­ri­or (COR­POVEX)

Items to be ex­port­ed over an in­tial three montn pe­ri­od are in 12 prod­uct ranges, in­clud­ing ketchup, may­on­naise, flour, white rice, mar­garine, chick­en, pow­dered milk and spaghet­ti. The to­tal val­ue for food items alone, once all ship­ments are made, is ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$24 mil­lion and 12.6 tonnes in weight.

The prod­ucts will be shipped to three cities in east­ern Venezuela–Cumana, Caru­pano and Guiria–with the first ship­ment is sched­uled to leave ear­ly to­day. Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon ex­pects trade with Venezuela to "pro­vide valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for im­me­di­ate and ex­pand­ed mar­ket ac­cess which can be mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial to both coun­tries and in par­tic­u­lar, in boost­ing the out­put of the do­mes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor."

Miguel P�rez Abad, Venezuela's Vice Pres­i­dent, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, who was in T&T for the sign­ing of the agree­ment, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.

He said: "This ini­tia­tive presents the op­por­tu­ni­ty not on­ly for Trinidad and To­ba­go's prod­ucts to en­ter Venezuela but al­so for Venezuela's prod­ucts to be trad­ed. The fi­nal­iza­tion of the arrange­ments would re­dound ben­e­fits to not on­ly the lo­cal pro­duc­tion sec­tor but would al­so cre­ate jobs and sat­is­fy a de­mand in Venezuela."

Abed added: "The ex­e­cu­tion of these agree­ments was a clear demon­stra­tion that with po­lit­i­cal will and a firm vi­sion, both coun­tries can cre­ate a blue­print for trade and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment."

Dr. Rolph Bal­go­b­in, pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) said the agree­ment "in­di­cates what can be done and the speed in which it can be done when the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor work to­geth­er,"

Lo­cal com­pa­nies ex­port­ing prod­ucts to Venezuela un­der the agree­ment in­clude Vem­co Lim­it­ed, Trinidad Par­boil Lim­it­ed/Old Mac Agro Sup­plies Lim­it­ed, Arawak and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, John Dick­in­son and Co. (W.I) Lim­it­ed, Na­tion­al Can­ners Lim­it­ed, Na­tion­al Flour Mills, Co­conut Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Lim­it­ed and Nu­trim­ix Feeds Lim­it­ed.