Next year promis­es to be fruit­ful for T&T and Cu­raçao as the third and fi­nal round of ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Par­tial Scope Agree­ment be­tween the coun­tries is ex­pect­ed to be held in the first quar­ter. The agree­ment will see more of T&T’s prod­ucts ex­port­ed to Cu­raçao and the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of this coun­try’s ex­port base to the Dutch Caribbean is­land and vice ver­sa.

These talks will al­so pave the way for dis­cus­sions for lo­cal ser­vices to be made avail­able to Cu­raçao.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Vanes­sa Torre, di­rec­tor of the for­eign eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion di­vi­sion at the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment of Cu­raçao was in T&T for talks with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. Those four days of ne­go­ti­a­tions led to the con­clu­sion of the sec­ond round of ne­go­ti­a­tions for a Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment (PS­TA) with Cu­raçao, which be­gan on De­cem­ber 9, 2024.

She ex­plained this will en­able Cu­raçao,a con­stituent coun­try with­in the King­dom of the Nether­lands, to trade with Trinidad with­out the bar­ri­ers.

The min­istry not­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions took place in Port-of-Spain, with both sides sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vanc­ing their po­si­tions in ar­eas such as mar­ket ac­cess, rules of ori­gin, tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to trade, trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, trade reme­dies, co­op­er­a­tion, com­pe­ti­tion pol­i­cy, le­gal and in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments, dis­pute set­tle­ment and in­vest­ment.

“Our fo­cus is now to fi­nalise ear­ly next year. The third round will be again in Cu­raçao as the first round was last Ju­ly.

“We want to fin­ish the ne­go­ti­a­tions in the first quar­ter so by March next year we are hop­ing to fin­ish and then we will start the process of rat­i­fy­ing it. That can take some time, be­cause in our case it has to go to the Nether­lands al­so to be rat­i­fied, and then back to the Par­lia­ment of Cu­raçao. But in the mean­time we can start col­lab­o­ra­tion,” Torre said. She added the lat­ter was al­so the rea­son for her vis­it to the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI), the um­brel­la body that brings to­geth­er all ser­vices sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions and as­so­ci­a­tions.

While Torre de­scribed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and her coun­try as very good and sig­nif­i­cant, she is hop­ing it can be fur­ther strength­ened.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trade Min­istry over the pe­ri­od 2017 to 2021, T&T gen­er­al­ly en­joyed a favourable trade bal­ance with Cu­raçao with the main ex­ports be­ing mar­garine, aer­at­ed bev­er­ages (soft drinks), pre-cooked/pack­aged ce­re­als and con­fec­tionery. The main im­ports in­clude stone gran­ules, cal­ci­um car­bon­ate and med­i­cines.

How­ev­er, there are many oth­er items from Cu­raçao that can find their way to this coun­try.

For in­stance, Torre said, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T to im­port fish, conch, chick­en eggs, os­trich eggs as well os­trich meat.

“We are ne­go­ti­at­ing the of­fer­ings at this point so we are go­ing through the list and we al­so have to get feed­back with our pri­vate sec­tor be­cause it’s very im­por­tant as gov­ern­ments to in­clude the pri­vate sec­tor and let them help to al­so de­cide what this agree­ment will look like,” she said.

Per­tain­ing to sourc­ing of ser­vices from T&T, Torre ex­plained, “Goods, are al­ready there and they are eas­i­er to trade...ser­vices we need to dis­cuss much fur­ther, have more con­sul­ta­tions with the pri­vate sec­tor, be­cause it’s di­rect com­petion in the mar­ket. So you need to have a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to­wards ser­vices than goods. In this case we are start­ing with goods and fin­ish­ing up goods. Let that process be­gin and then fo­cus on ser­vices, and al­so in­vest­ments.”

Torre not­ed Cu­raçao is al­ready re­ceiv­ing in­vest­ments from T&T as in the case of T&T’s pub­licly list­ed Agos­ti­ni’s Ltd, which ac­quired three phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and whole­sale traders: Aven­ta NV (Cu­raçao), Aven­ta Aru­ba NV and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Ware­hous­ing Inc in the Dutch Caribbean.

Aven­ta NV is a pro­fes­sion­al ware­hous­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny that op­er­ates in all is­lands of the Dutch Caribbean, in­clud­ing Cu­raçao, Aru­ba, Bonaire, Sint-Maarten, Sa­ba and Sint Eu­sta­tius.

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Ware­hous­ing Inc (PWI) is a ware­hous­ing com­pa­ny based at the Ha­to Air­port’s free­zone in Cu­raçao.

It was es­tab­lished in 1986 and has been ware­hous­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing to the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca through third par­ties.

Torre said there can be even more ac­tiv­i­ty re­gard­ing in­vest­ments from T&T.

“What we want to see is more more ex­change, more trans­fer of goods and ser­vices and al­so the peo­ple to pro­vide the ser­vices in the re­spec­tive coun­tries and that is some­thing that we are re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to,” she added.

In the area of nearshoring, Torre said this was al­so pos­si­ble with T&T, adding, “That’s cer­tain­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty for col­lab­o­ra­tion and al­so to ser­vice big­ger mar­kets, and we see al­so a chance to sup­port each oth­er in the ac­cess to the Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets. We are a mem­ber of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Ex­porters of Ser­vices from Latin Amer­i­ca and there is a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate and I know Trinidad is look­ing in­to that mar­ket as well.”

Cu­raçao has a very strong in­fra­struc­ture and IT sec­tor which can al­so be ben­e­fi­cial to this coun­try.

“We have three or four da­ta cen­tres so we can col­lab­o­rate with Trinidad to fa­cil­i­tate the trans­fer of da­ta and the host­ing of cer­tain da­ta from Trinidad and vice ver­sa. I know Trinidad is al­so look­ing in­to ex­pand­ing its ca­ble net­work, so there is op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­change more. There are al­ready con­ver­sa­tions, there’s al­ready col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the IT sec­tor and the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor of Trinidad with the one in Cu­raçao, so I know there are al­ready plans to join forces and to de­vel­op the IT sec­tor in the re­gion,” Torre said.

She al­so shared some ad­vise on how T&T can im­prove its tourism prod­uct, say­ing, “If more can be done to pro­mote Trinidad as a des­ti­na­tion in Cu­raçao, you can get a lot of Cu­raçaoans com­ing here.”

TTC­SI wel­comes in­ter­est in ser­vices

Av­enues to in­crease the ex­port of this coun­try’s ser­vices will fur­ther pro­pel T&T on the in­ter­na­tion­al map, said Di­anne Joseph, TTC­SI’s pres­i­dent, who not­ed that putting the right sys­tems in place is al­so key.

Iden­ti­fy­ing which ser­vices are cur­rent­ly most sought af­ter, she said, “The ser­vice that we will con­sid­er to be most crit­i­cal at this time is ICT (in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy). Since COVID has tak­en coun­tries or the world by storm they will con­tin­ue to utilise in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy that ser­vice and it is in more de­mand as we con­tin­ue to grow.

“The cre­ative sec­tor is al­so very im­por­tant and we be­lieve this is go­ing to be one of the ar­eas we will want to see mov­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go to Cu­ra­cao and oth­er des­ti­na­tions in the very near fu­ture.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Joseph said fu­ture dis­cus­sions will al­so fo­cus on im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness to en­able seam­less trad­ing be­tween T&T and Cu­ra­cao and vice ver­sa.

“In 2025 and go­ing for­ward, the TTC­SI will work with our lo­cal firms to strength­en their ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and help them put sys­tems in place so they can be ex­port ready and they can send for­ward their ser­vices to oth­er des­ti­na­tions out­side of Cu­ra­cao. But we think it is the ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­tu­al­ly start the dis­cus­sions now to cre­ate an ap­pro­pri­ate path that will take us to that lev­el as we move for­ward,” Joseph added.