An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As the glob­al eco­nom­ic map is be­ing re­drawn, for the first time in gen­er­a­tions the com­pass is point­ing de­ci­sive­ly to­ward New Del­hi, Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon, the first pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go-In­dia Busi­ness Fed­er­a­tion (TTIBF), ob­served, de­scrib­ing In­dia’s evo­lu­tion from a cul­tur­al touch­stone in­to what he called “a US$4.6 tril­lion jug­ger­naut.”

“In­dia is now the fastest-grow­ing ma­jor econ­o­my on the plan­et and on a col­li­sion course with be­com­ing the world’s third-largest econ­o­my,” he con­tin­ued, point­ing to pro­jec­tions that growth will ex­ceed 7.0 per cent in 2026, pow­ered by a mid­dle class of rough­ly 600 mil­lion peo­ple with ris­ing de­mand for en­er­gy, food and high-tech ser­vices.

Yet, de­spite cen­turies of his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al ties, Ar­joon ar­gued that com­mer­cial in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the two coun­tries have not kept pace.

“In 2024, bi­lat­er­al trade stood at just US$368.96 mil­lion. In a world where In­dia speaks the lan­guage of bil­lions, we are still trad­ing in mil­lions,” Ar­joon told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Tues­day. The TTIBF was launched on Sun­day at the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co-op­er­a­tion (MG­ICC) in Mount Hope.
He formed the TTIBF against what he de­scribed as a rapid­ly shift­ing glob­al back­drop. “Sup­ply chains that took 50 years to build are be­ing dis­man­tled and re­built in five. The world is hunt­ing for new, re­li­able and high-growth part­ners. Our pri­vate sec­tor can­not af­ford to be a spec­ta­tor.”
“The Fed­er­a­tion is the ve­hi­cle to bridge the gap be­tween our two busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties,” he added. “Our role is to iden­ti­fy con­crete op­por­tu­ni­ties and dri­ve part­ner­ships with In­di­an firms that can strength­en and ex­pand our lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor.”

A new Silk Road?

“For decades, our de­fault com­mer­cial ori­en­ta­tion has been to­ward North Amer­i­ca, Chi­na and Eu­rope,” Ar­joon not­ed. “Those re­la­tion­ships re­main vi­tal, but In­dia rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent op­por­tu­ni­ty a ris­ing pow­er with world-class ca­pa­bil­i­ties in tech­nol­o­gy, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and man­u­fac­tur­ing.”
He dis­tilled the Fed­er­a­tion’s man­date in­to three words: “Iden­ti­fy. Con­nect. Ad­vo­cate.”
“We are a sta­ble, Eng­lish-speak­ing ju­ris­dic­tion with a skilled work­force. That makes us a nat­ur­al land­ing pad for In­di­an cap­i­tal seek­ing a foothold in the Amer­i­c­as,” he said.
The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor, in his view, il­lus­trates the scale of un­tapped po­ten­tial. “In­dia sup­plies rough­ly 20 per cent of glob­al de­mand for gener­ic med­i­cines. By im­port­ing bulk ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ents from In­dia, we can do more than re­duce health­care costs.”
“I see a path­way for us to be­come a re­gion­al pack­ag­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion hub, ex­port­ing fin­ished gener­ics in­to Cari­com and Latin Amer­i­ca,” he added.

En­er­gy al­so fea­tures promi­nent­ly. Firms such as ONGC Videsh and Re­liance In­dus­tries, he ar­gued, could in­crease com­pet­i­tive­ness in lo­cal bid rounds.

“Greater par­tic­i­pa­tion dri­ves stronger out­comes and sup­ports long-term gas pro­duc­tion.”
Turn­ing to tech­nol­o­gy, Ar­joon de­scribed the dig­i­tal econ­o­my as “a fron­tier we must claim.” With the adop­tion of In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI), he point­ed out that cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions are be­com­ing seam­less.

“At­tract­ing In­di­an IT firms to Tamana In­tech Park is not just about jobs. It is about im­port­ing the DNA of a glob­al tech su­per­pow­er.”

Agri­cul­ture is al­so on his radar. “In­di­an pre­ci­sion ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems and seed in­no­va­tion can ma­te­ri­al­ly im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and food se­cu­ri­ty. These are prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions, not ab­stract ideas.”

Help­ing the lit­tle guy

Dr Ar­joon is par­tic­u­lar­ly fo­cused on small­er en­ter­pris­es. “The big fish in busi­ness of­ten have the net­works and ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty to nav­i­gate in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Many of our Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es do not.”

In­dia’s scale and reg­u­la­to­ry com­plex­i­ty can be daunt­ing. “With­out in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port, it is in­tim­i­dat­ing,” he ac­knowl­edged. “That is pre­cise­ly why the TTIBF was de­signed to low­er those bar­ri­ers.”

He is build­ing di­rect pipelines to bod­ies such as the Fed­er­a­tion of In­di­an Cham­bers of Com­merce and In­dus­try (FIC­CI) and oth­er ex­port coun­cils. “We want cu­rat­ed in­tro­duc­tions, cred­i­ble mar­ket in­tel­li­gence, and struc­tured en­gage­ment for small­er play­ers.”
Trade mis­sions will be de­lib­er­ate rather than sym­bol­ic. “Our en­tre­pre­neurs will not just walk trade show floors. They will walk in­to pre-arranged meet­ings with clear com­mer­cial ob­jec­tives. At the end of the day, deals are done face-to-face.”

He al­so point­ed to In­dia’s ex­pand­ing ven­ture cap­i­tal ecosys­tem. In­di­an in­vestors are ac­tive­ly seek­ing emerg­ing mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties. If a young lo­cal tech en­tre­pre­neur has a vi­able prod­uct, we want to en­sure that cap­i­tal sees that po­ten­tial.”
“The Fed­er­a­tion will main­tain a rhythm of quar­ter­ly busi­ness fo­rums and sec­tor-spe­cif­ic round­ta­bles,” he stressed. “Com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships are built through sus­tained, con­sis­tent con­tact, not one-off rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­monies.”

Com­merce over con­ver­sa­tion

Re­flect­ing on the Fed­er­a­tion’s ori­gins, Ar­joon em­pha­sised that it was not born from a sin­gle flash of in­spi­ra­tion. “It grew out of sus­tained dis­cus­sions and shared con­vic­tion, with a group of busi­ness­men, and In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er, Pradeep Singh Ra­jpuro­hit,” Ar­joon said.

“For me, this is root­ed in years of study­ing our econ­o­my’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties,” he ex­plained. “Be­ing over­ly de­pen­dent on a few nar­row mar­kets and com­modi­ties is a risk we can no longer af­ford.”

He ac­cept­ed the pres­i­den­cy, he in­di­cat­ed, be­cause In­dia rep­re­sents “a strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty to shift the tra­jec­to­ry of our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment” and be­cause “we must be at the ta­ble as the glob­al eco­nom­ic or­der evolves.”

Pub­lic pol­i­cy align­ment is al­so emerg­ing. Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, con­firmed that a Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment with In­dia is be­ing pur­sued to re­duce tar­iff bar­ri­ers and en­cour­age joint ven­tures, lay­ing the ground­work for in­vest­ment, em­ploy­ment and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer.

Ar­joon al­so high­light­ed Ra­jpuro­hit’s en­dorse­ment of deep­er eco­nom­ic en­gage­ment. The High Com­mis­sion­er has un­der­scored the scope to el­e­vate a long­stand­ing part­ner­ship in­to a more ro­bust com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship, not­ing that while trade cur­rent­ly sits in the hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars, en­gage­ment be­tween economies of this scale should ul­ti­mate­ly be mea­sured in bil­lions.

“The ob­jec­tive is to con­vert his­tor­i­cal kin­ship in­to a high-per­for­mance eco­nom­ic en­gine,” Ar­joon con­clud­ed. “Our job is to iden­ti­fy, con­nect, and ad­vo­cate in a sus­tained, pro­fes­sion­al man­ner. In­di­an pri­vate cap­i­tal is search­ing for sta­ble, Eng­lish-speak­ing ju­ris­dic­tions. We meet those cri­te­ria.”

By build­ing di­rect in­sti­tu­tion­al pipelines and sup­port­ing mod­ernised tax and cus­toms frame­works, he added, “we can move from con­ver­sa­tion to com­merce and build bridges that trans­form shared his­to­ry in­to shared pros­per­i­ty.”