The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try has signed a new par­tial scope trade agree­ment with Chile to strength­en ef­forts to ex­pand trade re­la­tions and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion.

A re­lease from the Trade Min­istry is­sued yes­ter­day said this agree­ment comes af­ter sev­en years of ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween both coun­tries and would as­sist T&T to in­crease both en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy ex­ports as part of the gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts.

This agree­ment is the first signed by Chile in the Caribbean and the first for T&T with a South Amer­i­can na­tion.

With­in the frame­work 213 tar­iff lines for lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts would in­cur ze­ro per cent du­ty in­to Chile up­on en­try in­to force of the agree­ment, fol­low­ing which prod­ucts un­der 54 tar­iff lines would at­tain du­ty-free treat­ment in Chile, af­ter three years.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Chilean man­u­fac­tur­ers now ben­e­fit from re­duced rates of du­ty on prod­ucts from Chile in­to T&T un­der 143 tar­iff lines.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the min­istry said pref­er­en­tial mar­ket ac­cess treat­ment in Chile for this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor would be pro­vid­ed for items such as methanol, am­mo­nia, LNG, avi­a­tion fu­els, base oils, lu­bri­cants, propane, bu­tane and urea etc.

In ad­di­tion, non-en­er­gy items from T&T which would have pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to Chile from food and bev­er­age, cos­met­ics, chem­i­cals, con­struc­tion, pa­per and fash­ion in­dus­tries in­clude al­co­holic bev­er­ages, juices, pas­ta, co­coa prod­ucts, ketchup and oth­er condi­ments, wa­ters, con­crete, cloth­ing, fer­rous prod­ucts, fruits and veg­eta­bles and doors and win­dows.

Speak­ing at the agree­ment’s sign­ing, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon un­der­scored the agree­ment ad­vanced the gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and sup­port­ed the over­ar­ch­ing pol­i­cy ob­jec­tive of deep­en­ing trade ties with Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets while en­hanc­ing the glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and reach of lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured goods.

She said the min­istry would con­tin­ue to pur­sue trade and oth­er agree­ments both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that could sup­port the pri­vate sec­tor in en­hanc­ing ex­port ca­pa­bil­i­ties and pen­e­trat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Gopee-Scoon fur­ther not­ed that from 2014 to 2020, T&T’s to­tal ex­ports to Chile av­er­aged ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$710.6 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, with en­er­gy ex­ports ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$706.3 mil­lion, while non-en­er­gy ex­ports av­er­aged TT$4.4 mil­lion.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks and sign­ing the agree­ment on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of Chile, act­ing Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Clau­dia San­hueza de­scribed T&T as an im­por­tant part­ner for Chile and Latin Amer­i­ca.

“This par­tial scope agree­ment reaf­firms our coun­try’s in­ter­est in ap­proach­ing the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty, as part of the strat­e­gy to pro­mote the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of our in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic re­la­tions, a man­date es­tab­lished by Pres­i­dent Gabriel Boric to face the cur­rent glob­al eco­nom­ic sce­nario.

“The Caribbean has an im­por­tant lo­gis­ti­cal po­ten­tial, in ad­di­tion to be­ing one of the main sources of en­er­gy re­sources in the area. This re­gion is de­vel­op­ing, with many busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties and with a high in­ter­est in at­tract­ing sus­tain­able in­vest­ment that gen­er­ates high-lev­el tech­ni­cal jobs. At the same time, it presents op­por­tu­ni­ties for agro-in­dus­tri­al coun­tries such as Chile be­cause of its high vol­ume of tourism,” San­hueza said.

Recog­nis­ing T&T as a lead­ing play­er in the Caribbean, San­hueza al­so ex­pressed Chile’s in­ter­est in fur­ther­ing a bi­lat­er­al trade re­la­tion­ship with the in­clu­sion of oth­er is­sues such as trade in ser­vices, trade and gen­der, dig­i­tal econ­o­my and MSMEs, among oth­ers.