Raphael John-Lall

Pe­ru’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, David Fran­cis­co Mála­ga who de­scribed the coun­try as one of the re­gion’s top agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­ers, wants to see in­creased trade with T&T in this area.

“It’s a huge green­house. In the last five years, Pe­ru main­tained the high­est an­nu­al growth rate in non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports in the re­gion with an av­er­age an­nu­al ex­pan­sion of 8.8 per cent, main­ly in agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts. Our non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports reached a record high of US$10.42 bil­lion in 2022. Pe­ru has be­come an im­por­tant sup­pli­er of food to the main mar­kets around the world. We are among the top 20 biggest fruit and veg­etable pro­duc­ers in the world,” Mála­ga said.

Mála­ga spoke on Mon­day at a Do­ing Busi­ness with Pe­ru we­bi­nar host­ed by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI).

He said Pe­ru and T&T now cel­e­brate 55 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.

“Our sound re­la­tion­ship is based up­on shared de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples, glob­al peace and the erad­i­ca­tion of pover­ty. Food se­cu­ri­ty of our pop­u­la­tions and the fight against pover­ty and mal­nu­tri­tion have be­come one of the pri­or­i­ties of both coun­tries and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment are the es­sen­tial con­di­tions to achieve food se­cu­ri­ty.”

He added that the we­bi­nar was host­ed by the Em­bassy of Pe­ru in T&T and the TTC­SI to show­case the op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered by the South Amer­i­can coun­try in the area of the sup­ply of high qual­i­ty fresh fruit and veg­eta­bles.

He blamed the cur­rent glob­al food cri­sis on the “dev­as­tat­ing” ef­fects of cli­mate change and armed con­flicts that have gen­er­at­ed a short­age of fer­tilis­ers glob­al­ly and in­fla­tion which he said has all im­pact­ed the price of food.

“The search for glob­al so­lu­tions to in­ter­na­tion­al prob­lems, re­gion­al uni­ty and co­op­er­a­tion of­fer prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions to face the food cri­sis.”

He said thanks to Pe­ru’s cli­mat­ic con­di­tions, the grow­ing and pro­duc­tion of di­verse fruit and veg­eta­bles is pos­si­ble through­out the year.

He al­so in­formed that from Sep­tem­ber 13 to 16, the Pe­ru­vian Em­bassy will host its sec­ond food fes­ti­val at the Hy­att Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

The TTC­SI’s CEO, Vashti Guyadeen who al­so spoke dur­ing the we­bi­nar high­light­ed Pe­ru’s suc­cess­es in the tourism sec­tor.

“If you do a Google search for Pe­ru, the re­sults will point to its rich ar­chae­o­log­i­cal her­itage—the In­cas, Machu Pic­chu, the mys­te­ri­ous Naz­ca Lines—which is the back­bone of its thriv­ing tourism sec­tor.

“The sec­tor em­ploys some 11 per cent of Pe­ru’s pop­u­la­tion. In 2021, Pe­ru gen­er­at­ed around US$1.04 bil­lion in tourism rev­enues. By De­cem­ber 2022, that fig­ure had moved up to US$3 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to c-e-i-c-da­ta-dot-com.”

She said for T&T ser­vices sec­tor com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the tourism in­dus­try, Pe­ru’s per­for­mance in the tourism sec­tor sounds like de­sir­able growth, and an ex­cit­ing mar­ket they may wish to ex­plore.

“I am sure some of you al­ready may have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Em­bassy’s busi­ness-to-busi­ness tourism pro­mo­tion dur­ing this month. In ad­di­tion, I know the Am­bas­sador and his team have been pur­su­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to share his coun­try’s tourism ex­per­tise with us, as well as to make it pos­si­ble for more T&T na­tion­als to ex­pe­ri­ence the vi­brant mix that is the Pe­ru tourism and cul­tur­al pack­age.”

She said lo­cal ser­vices com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor should take note that in Ju­ly 2022, Pe­ru and T&T signed a first Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) for in­ter-in­sti­tu­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween both coun­tries’ na­tion­al li­braries—with NALIS and the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Pe­ru work­ing to­geth­er to pro­tect and pre­serve both coun­tries’ doc­u­men­tary her­itage, among oth­er projects.

“I am aware that His Ex­cel­len­cy and his team are al­so pur­su­ing oth­er ar­eas for mu­tu­al co­op­er­a­tion and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.”

She point­ed out that it may be in the agri­cul­ture and fish­eries sec­tors—es­pe­cial­ly in terms of T&T’s food se­cu­ri­ty agen­da—where there may be much to ex­plore.

“In­deed, Am­bas­sador Mála­ga has gone on record as stat­ing that Pe­ru is ea­ger and will­ing to share its ex­per­tise in these ar­eas of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Pe­ru has sought to in­crease its im­ports of fer­tilis­ers from this coun­try, which is crit­i­cal for its ex­pand­ing agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.”

She quot­ed sta­tis­tics which show that ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade, in 2021, T&T’s ex­ports to Pe­ru were val­ued at US$7.88 mil­lion.

“As a mat­ter of in­ter­est, the li­on’s share of those ex­ports were or­gan­ic chem­i­cals such as acyclic al­co­hols and their halo­genat­ed, sul­fonat­ed and ni­trat­ed de­riv­a­tives, worth some US$7.29 mil­lion, while in­or­gan­ic chem­i­cals, pre­cious met­al com­pounds, iso­topes and plas­tics al­so added rough­ly US$500,000.”

She added that the UN’s COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade re­ports that Pe­ru’s ex­ports to T&T dur­ing the year 2021 were val­ued at US$16 mil­lion.

Of that fig­ure, plas­tics con­tributed $10.27 mil­lion, veg­etable, fruit, nut food prepa­ra­tions made up just over US$936,000 and dairy prod­ucts, eggs, hon­ey, and oth­er ed­i­ble prod­ucts were val­ued at US$880,000.

She al­so not­ed that Pe­ru is one of the world’s largest ex­porters of quinoa—“the gold­en grain of the An­des”—which has been grac­ing T&T’s gro­cery shelves for many years now.

“In keep­ing with both our coun­tries’ food se­cu­ri­ty agen­das, I could eas­i­ly see a boost to those fig­ures I’ve just quot­ed—in terms of Pe­ru im­port­ing more of T&T’s fer­tilis­ers and chem­i­cals, and T&T im­port­ing more of Pe­ru’s agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.”

She con­clud­ed by say­ing that the ra­tio­nale be­hind the TTC­SI’s Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries is to help small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) op­er­at­ing in ser­vices in­dus­tries in T&T who are ea­ger to ex­pand in­to new mar­ket and find their coun­ter­parts across the world.

“One im­por­tant step we’ve tak­en to sup­port our SMEs is to cre­ate a Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Por­tal (NSEP).

“This por­tal makes it pos­si­ble for T&T’s ser­vices sec­tor firms to be seen by and make con­nec­tions with ser­vices sec­tor firms in oth­er coun­tries and is a crit­i­cal pil­lar sup­port­ing our Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries,” said Guyadeen.