The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion  were both full of praise fol­low­ing the sign­ing of the Guyana - T&T Mem­o­ran­dum Of Un­der­stand­ing over the week­end

In a re­lease the TTCIC said, “The re­cent sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing by the Gov­ern­ments of Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward for trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tions be­tween our two coun­tries and CARI­COM as a whole.”

The Cham­ber not­ed, the MOU, which is tar­get­ed at agri­cul­ture, food se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy, ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty
and tourism, “comes at a crit­i­cal time when the world is fac­ing threats to glob­al sup­ply chains, ex­treme weath­er events, se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and ris­ing costs of liv­ing.”

The cham­ber said how­ev­er there were oth­er is­sues of trade to be ad­dressed to fur­ther bol­ster re­gion­al trade.

The re­lease said, “As a pri­vate sec­tor or­ga­ni­za­tion that sup­ports re­gion­al trade and in­vest­ment, we rec­og­nize that one of the ma­jor pain points that must be ad­dressed is non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers (NTBs). To this end, we wel­come an as­sess­ment of iden­ti­fied NTBs and look for­ward to the find­ings as we move to­wards the re­al­iza­tion of the ob­jec­tives of the CARI­COM Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.”

The re­lease con­tin­ued, “We are pleased that a high-lev­el Com­mis­sion to over­see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the MOU will be es­tab­lished and will in­clude rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both the pub­lic and the pri­vate sec­tor. The glob­al trends that are pre­sent­ing chal­lenges to the re­gion are clear and we now have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work to­geth­er for the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the CARI­COM economies. The T&T Cham­ber stands ready to sup­port any ini­tia­tives in mak­ing this a re­al­i­ty.”
 The TTMA said it wel­comed this of­fi­cial sign­ing, which the as­so­ci­a­tion said will as­sist in fur­ther so­lid­i­fy­ing ex­ist­ing trade re­la­tion­ships be­tween both coun­tries.
TTMA Pres­i­dent Coos­al said, “The TTMA en­dors­es the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the two Gov­ern­ments and com­mends the Heads of State on their fore­sight in the sign­ing of the MOU, which in­cludes in­ter alia, the ar­eas of Trade and In­vest­ment, Agri­cul­ture and Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty, En­er­gy and In­fra­struc­ture. The MOU will serve as a cat­a­lyst for the pro­mo­tion of free trade with­in CARI­COM, while at the same time pro­mote the deep­en­ing of the CSME process, al­low­ing the tenets of true in­te­gra­tion among a group of coun­tries to be so­lid­i­fied as was en­vi­sioned by the framers of the CSME process.”

She added, “TTMA be­lieves the con­tin­ued re­la­tion­ship be­tween both Gov­ern­ments is promis­ing as we seek to re­solve trade bar­ri­ers, which are known to cur­tail the de­vel­op­ment and progress of coun­tries. As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, TTMA shares an am­i­ca­ble work­ing re­la­tion­ship with our coun­ter­part, the Guyana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (GM­SA), hav­ing host­ed its re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent at one of our we­bi­na­rs in April, 2022. In fact, the TTMA is in the process of fi­nal­iz­ing our own MOU with the GM­SA, which will seek the mu­tu­al ben­e­fit of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors of both coun­tries as it re­lates to trade.”

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