Out­go­ing Am­bas­sador of Chile to T&T Juan Aníbal Bar­ría Gar­cía be­lieves this coun­try has a mul­ti­tude of re­sources which can be eas­i­ly show­cased on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket as well as unique prod­uct and ser­vice of­fer­ings which can al­so as­sist in deep­en­ing our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Af­ter al­most five years, Gar­cia will be leav­ing his post in T&T by the first week in Feb­ru­ary and will be re­placed with a fresh face.

In an ex­it in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, the am­bas­sador shared his in­sights on suc­cess­es dur­ing his time in this coun­try and how ties can be strength­ened in var­i­ous sec­tors.

In trade, he not­ed T&T re­cent­ly con­clud­ed the third round of ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment.

Nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits are an­tic­i­pat­ed to emerge from the agree­ment, in­clud­ing pref­er­en­tial ac­cess for sev­er­al lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods (via the re­moval of im­port du­ties) in the Chilean mar­ket.

Fur­ther, im­ports in­to T&T of se­lect­ed in­puts in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­sumer goods will have re­duced du­ty.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this coun­try is seek­ing to elim­i­nate non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and to fos­ter co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the coun­tries in mu­tu­al ar­eas of in­ter­est, in­clud­ing trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and elec­tron­ic trade.

A fourth round is ex­pect­ed in May 2023.

T&T and Chile share a very im­por­tant trad­ing re­la­tion­ship, with the trade bal­ance tra­di­tion­al­ly favour­ing this coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trade Min­istry in 2020, T&T’s ex­ports to Chile were es­ti­mat­ed at $333.5 mil­lion and were pri­mar­i­ly dom­i­nat­ed by en­er­gy prod­ucts such as am­mo­nia, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas and urea.

It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that this agree­ment can as­sist with the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of T&T’s ex­port base to Chile to­ward the non-en­er­gy sec­tor and al­so in­crease ex­port val­ues.

Non-en­er­gy prod­ucts ex­port­ed to Chile in 2020 in­clud­ed aro­mat­ic bit­ters, rum and liqueurs and cor­dials.

On the im­port side, trade has been fair­ly sta­ble over the last five years, with prod­ucts val­ued at $148 mil­lion im­port­ed from Chile in 2020.

The top im­port­ed prod­ucts in­clud­ed tis­sue, wood prod­ucts, cloth­ing, grapes and frozen fish.

Ac­cord­ing to Gar­cia, the agree­ment is crit­i­cal to boost­ing ties be­tween the two coun­tries as he ex­plained, “We are very op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture of this agree­ment. I think this would be a very im­por­tant tool for in­creas­ing and ex­pand­ing our bi­lat­er­al trade. It is im­por­tant our com­mer­cial and bi­lat­er­al trade go be­yond the gas.”

He added it is al­so im­por­tant to have more Chilean prod­ucts on lo­cal su­per­mar­ket shelves and vice-ver­sa.

“I see in the Chilean su­per­mar­kets rum from dif­fer­ent places in the Caribbean, in the Span­ish and Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean but what hap­pen with you all,” Gar­cia said, as he added this coun­try has a va­ri­ety of ex­cel­lent bands of spir­its such as An­gos­tu­ra.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in the area of ex­ports, this coun­try al­ready has a nat­ur­al ad­van­tage as Gar­cia said T&T, is in some ways, a “South Amer­i­can as well as a Caribbean coun­try” which he at­trib­uted to its unique lo­ca­tion and in­flu­ences in­clud­ing the Span­ish cul­ture.

How­ev­er, he not­ed the lan­guage bar­ri­er can be an ob­sta­cle, em­pha­sis­ing its im­por­tance for con­tin­u­ous work to be done in this sphere to cre­ate greater har­mo­ny across the board.

In this vein, Gar­cia sug­gest­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al ven­tures where Chilean stu­dents want­i­ng to study Eng­lish can do so in T&T and lo­cal stu­dents can al­so have more op­tions to pur­sue stud­ies in­clud­ing Span­ish in Chile.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, he said peo­ple looked to North Amer­i­can coun­tries like the US, the UK and Cana­da for aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits but why not go to Chile, as Gar­cia em­pha­sised the sig­nif­i­cance of not on­ly achiev­ing more in­te­grat­ed economies but al­so ser­vices.

“For in­stance, you have good re­searchers in cli­mate change but for Chile, this is a big chal­lenge. For both sides we can be win­ners,” he added.

Tourism and sport

In the com­ing weeks, T&T is ex­pect­ed to be flood­ed with tourists for what is promised to be a mega Car­ni­val.

How­ev­er, Gar­cia be­lieves the reign of the Mer­ry Monarch should not be a sea­son­al event but one with im­mense po­ten­tial which can be cap­i­talised all year round.

Fur­ther, he al­so not­ed icons like re­cent­ly de­ceased vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian, Leroy Cal­liste al­so known as Black Stal­in, whose works can live on by be­ing show­cased to tourists.

Ac­cord­ing to the Chilean Am­bas­sador T&T’s Car­ni­val is a “gold­en prod­uct” which needs greater pro­mo­tion.

“That was my rec­om­men­da­tion to the CEO of the Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion. It goes be­yond the two days. Even all now pro­mote the events in the lead-up to Car­ni­val to at­tract more vis­i­tors.

“Your Car­ni­val is very well-known to the di­as­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty in the north but not in South Amer­i­ca so we need to dis­cov­er this and main­tain this with oth­er events like the steel­pan for ex­am­ple,” Gar­cia said, as he sug­gest­ed pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment to help pro­mote T&T’s cul­ture and strengths on a larg­er scale.

There are al­so many pos­si­bil­i­ties in T&T’s sports tourism as Gar­cia al­so not­ed that the Caribbean gen­er­al­ly, is well-an­chored through the host­ing of sev­er­al lead­ing games.

“We need to show that it is more than just oil and gas and even To­ba­go is rich to pro­mote,” Gar­cia em­pha­sised.

Chal­lenges to strength­en ties

Whether it be har­ness­ing T&T’s nat­ur­al re­sources or boost­ing sec­tors to in­crease ex­ports, there are ob­sta­cles this coun­try needs to tack­le.

“Di­ver­si­fy­ing your ex­ports, that is the main eco­nom­ic chal­lenge,” Gar­cia said, adding that there al­so need to be open more mar­kets in dif­fer­ent ar­eas in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Hav­ing greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty is one means of en­sur­ing this.

“You have to have more open skies and im­prove your con­nec­tiv­i­ty with Chile. We have flights to Ja­maica but what hap­pened here?

“It is rel­e­vant to in­crease your vis­its to Chile and we have to do more to al­so at­tract T&T as an in­ter­est­ing mar­ket as well,” Gar­cia said, as he hoped more of his coun­try­men can vis­it this coun­try in the fu­ture and vice-ver­sa.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the am­bas­sador said more can be done to high­light T&T’s culi­nary de­lights, which can per­haps be pro­mot­ed as a cui­sine fair to at­tract for­eign­ers and fur­ther boost forex.

Cit­ing T&T’s man­go sea­son, for in­stance, Gar­cia said this can al­so be show­cased as a main at­trac­tion on T&T’s in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al cal­en­dar. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, many by-prod­ucts can be de­rived from the trop­i­cal fruit and av­enues for ex­port ex­plored as Gar­cia added Chileans’ ap­petite for man­goes has been grow­ing.

De­spite his de­part­ing T&T, the Chilean Am­bas­sador said this coun­try will re­main close to his heart and he hopes to al­ways main­tain ties.