The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has said it ap­plauds the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) on trade com­plaints be­tween T&T and Ja­maica.

This is a land­mark that will deep­en and strength­en ex­ist­ing trade re­la­tions, the TTMA said in a state­ment.

“The TTMA ful­ly sup­ports this ini­tia­tive as it will fur­ther de­vel­op the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my. It will al­so as­sist in the re­moval of non-trade bar­ri­ers and re­stric­tions and con­tin­ue to de­vel­op each coun­try’s econ­o­my,” the TTMA ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­cent­ly, both coun­tries faced many trade-re­lat­ed chal­lenges, es­pe­cial­ly those orig­i­nat­ing in the ex­tra re­gion­al are­na which has cur­tailed the free flow of trade.

It said so­lid­i­fy­ing do­mes­tic re­la­tions, such as this MOU is there­fore, time­ly.

TTMA added it looks for­ward to the agree­ment es­tab­lish­ing a Trade Com­plaints Mech­a­nism to pro­vide trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tions in ad­dress­ing con­cerns.

“The MOU res­onates with TTMA’s lob­by­ing ef­forts over years where for ex­am­ple, the as­so­ci­a­tion es­tab­lished a ‘Trad­edesk’ to re­solve is­sues be­tween the two coun­tries and host­ed trade mis­sions to Ja­maica.

“Rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly, Ja­maica has part­nered in the TTMA’s Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), show­cas­ing its goods and ser­vices to buy­ers and par­tic­i­pants from T&T and the wider world,” the TTMA ex­plained.

It al­so not­ed this coun­try and Ja­maica are each oth­er’s ma­jor trad­ing part­ner with­in Cari­com and ef­forts must en­sure trad­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for both coun­tries are not on­ly sus­tained but con­tin­ue to grow.

“Sig­nif­i­cant trade be­tween both coun­tries takes place from sev­er­al in­dus­tries in­clud­ing food and bev­er­age, con­struc­tion, print­ing, pack­ag­ing and the chem­i­cal sec­tors.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in­vest­ment in key sec­tors is al­so sig­nif­i­cant in both coun­tries es­pe­cial­ly in fi­nance, in­sur­ance, the fast-mov­ing con­sumer re­lat­ed sec­tors,” the TTMA added.

It said its com­mit­ment is un­der­scored by a pro­posed trade mis­sion to Ja­maica cared from No­vem­ber 20 to 25.

Among the ob­jec­tives are build­ing on the com­mit­ments of both gov­ern­ments to im­prove bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, seek­ing raw ma­te­r­i­al sup­pli­ers from Ja­maica and en­hanc­ing trad­ing re­la­tions and op­por­tu­ni­ties for the pri­vate sec­tor from both coun­ties.