GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon says T&T has been proud­ly con­tribut­ing to­wards the bur­geon­ing Africa-Caribbean trade cor­ri­dor, not­ing that in 2023, to­tal ex­ports from this coun­try to the con­ti­nent were val­ued at TT$2.3 bil­lion (US$336 mil­lion) with im­ports val­ued at TT$261 mil­lion (US$38 mil­lion).

She not­ed that al­though en­er­gy prod­ucts dom­i­nat­ed, the bas­ket of ex­ports in­clud­ed among oth­ers, lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured food and bev­er­ages, aro­mat­ic bit­ters, cook­ing oil, paints and chem­i­cals.

These, the min­is­ter said, reached both an­glo­phone and fran­coph­o­ne coun­tries, in­clud­ing Eswa­ti­ni, Ghana, Liberia, Nige­ria and Sene­gal.

Gopee-Scoon made the re­marks while de­liv­er­ing re­marks at the an­nu­al Trans-At­lantic Trade and In­vest­ment sym­po­sium which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

She fur­ther not­ed that T&T's im­ports from Africa were just as var­ied ex­plain­ing, "This coun­try sourced prod­ucts such as au­to parts, spices, cloth­ing, processed foods, ap­pli­ances, from a range of coun­tries span­ning the breadth of the con­ti­nent in­clud­ing South Africa, Mo­roc­co, Egypt, Zim­bab­we, Mada­gas­car, Nige­ria, and Tunisia."

Re­gard­ing T&T's in­vest­ment with Ghana ,the min­is­ter not­ed this coun­try's trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tions with Africa is set to grow sig­nif­i­cant­ly, with Ghana serv­ing as a gate­way to West Africa's 448 mil­lion peo­ple.

She added that re­cent en­gage­ments aim to ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties in Ghana and es­tab­lish a foun­da­tion for broad­er African trade and in­vest­ment link­ages.

Gopee-Scoon said that the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Ghana, with­in the past three months, con­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions for an Agree­ment for the Rec­i­p­ro­cal Pro­mo­tion and Pro­tec­tion of In­vest­ments, in­di­cat­ing the de­sire by both sides to ad­vance in­vest­ment re­la­tions.

"This agree­ment, which will cre­ate a sta­ble and favourable en­vi­ron­ment for com­pa­nies to in­vest, op­er­ate, and thrive, is ex­pect­ed to be signed im­mi­nent­ly.

"We are ready for oth­er sim­i­lar en­gage­ments with oth­er coun­tries on the con­ti­nent and ea­ger for African in­vest­ments," she said.

As it re­lates to en­er­gy re­la­tions she said the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny is tar­get­ing sev­er­al African coun­tries in­clud­ing Mozam­bique, Ghana and Tan­za­nia, for the pro­vi­sion of tech­ni­cal ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices.

One ma­jor break­through, Gopee-Scoon iden­ti­fied was the se­cur­ing of a tech­ni­cal ser­vices agree­ment by Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd with Ghana’s Gas Gath­er­ing Ltd in 2023.

Not­ing that ex­ports of lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured steel­pans span the globe, and in­clude Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Guade­loupe, Be­lize, Chile, the Unit­ed States, France, Unit­ed King­dom, Japan and Aus­tralia Gopee-Scoon said she ex­pects African coun­tries, to soon be in­clud­ed in the mix.

The theme of this year's con­fer­ence was “Dis­man­tling Bar­ri­ers and Strength­en­ing Ties be­tween Africa and the Caribbean" which she said high­light­ed the "re­mark­able progress of our re­gions and un­der­scores the need for greater ex­change of goods, ser­vices and ideas, for a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial fu­ture."