An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers
@guardian.co.tt

A del­e­ga­tion of In­di­an busi­ness­men is in the coun­try to pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ing, health, dig­i­tal, agri­cul­ture and tourism sec­tors.

At a news con­fer­ence to an­nounce the in­vest­ment mis­sion from In­dia, yes­ter­day, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said do­ing busi­ness with the coun­try would be sig­nif­i­cant for T&T’s econ­o­my as In­dia is pro­ject­ed to be the third largest econ­o­my in the world by 2029.  

“As it is, the cur­rent Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) of In­dia stands at US$5 tril­lion. In­dia is a key growth en­gine for the world, con­tribut­ing 16 per cent to the glob­al growth in 2023. The growth rate of In­dia is 7.2 per cent, while most coun­tries are grow­ing be­low that. From fis­cal 2022 to 2023, it was the sec­ond high­est among the G20 coun­tries. It shows the kind of strength the In­di­an busi­ness­es can bring to T&T,” said Gopee-Scoon.

She said four more in­vestors with an in­ter­est in man­u­fac­tur­ing and tourism are sched­uled to ar­rive this week and the group of in­vestors will al­so vis­it To­ba­go on Thurs­day.

Ex­plain­ing why he de­cid­ed to vis­it this coun­try, Mon­ish Behl, whose com­pa­nies are Asia Plates Steel LLC & Gulf Met­als Trad­ing LLC, said when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley vis­it­ed Mum­bai last month, the busi­ness­man was im­pressed by his vi­sion for T&T.

“There are a lot of oth­er in­vestors who would be vis­it­ing this coun­try to ex­plore the op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween the two coun­tries. I have my steel, wa­ter, gen­er­at­ing and me­dia com­pa­ny, so I am very in­ter­est­ed in T&T,” Behl said.

Po­ten­tial in­vestor Amit Sawh­ney, whose Nip­pon Glob­al Group op­er­ates in In­dia, Dubai and Eu­rope, said his com­pa­ny cov­ers food pro­cess­ing, au­to­mo­bile parts and avi­a­tion.

Sawh­ney said four in­vestors from In­dia met with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, dur­ing which he out­lined so many in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T.

“I was think­ing why we did not know this be­fore. We con­trol the IT sec­tor; we are strong in avi­a­tion. So, In­dia has a lot of skills and to­day I re­alise that T&T has a lot of scope,” Swaney dis­closed.

And Anuj Gup­ta, of At­u­laya Health­Care Pvt Ltd, said as it per­tains to health, this sec­tor can­not grow if it is not sup­port­ed by the gov­ern­ment.

“I have a lot of con­fi­dence af­ter hear­ing the Prime Min­is­ter say he is very keen on mak­ing ma­jor changes for the ben­e­fit of this coun­try. The health com­pa­ny is in­to di­ag­nos­tics, which helps pre­vent dis­eases. We think we can do won­ders in T&T with the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment,” Gup­ta added.

Last week Mon­day, Dr Row­ley met with Naveen Jin­dal, chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er, who is a po­ten­tial buy­er of the state-owned re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre.

A state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er is one of In­dia’s lead­ing busi­ness hous­es, with a sub­stan­tial pres­ence in steel, min­ing, pow­er, and in­fra­struc­ture.

The meet­ing be­tween Jin­dal and the Prime Min­is­ter was brought up by the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) pres­i­dent gen­er­al, An­cel Ro­get, in his ad­dress to work­ers at the Char­lie King Junc­tion in La Brea on Labour Day.

Ro­get, who al­so leads the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), told union mem­bers last Wednes­day that the bid­ding process, which the OW­TU was a part of, had been closed.

“But guess what, he is en­ter­tain­ing in the of­fi­cial res­i­dence an In­di­an busi­ness­man for the same re­fin­ery. I want to say this af­ter­noon the OW­TU will not stand idly by and al­low any­body to walk in here and take over the re­fin­ery. So In­di­an busi­ness­man or not, who­ev­er you may be, we must be a part of go­ing for­ward in the op­er­a­tion of that re­fin­ery,” Ro­get warned.

On Sun­day, Dr Row­ley told the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s sports and fam­i­ly day that the Gov­ern­ment hoped to be able to an­nounce an op­er­a­tor of the re­fin­ery in Au­gust.