The Min­istry of Fi­nance has en­tered in­to a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with the US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) to pro­vide this coun­try’s Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion with the rel­e­vant tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, train­ing and trans­for­ma­tive ini­tia­tives to fur­ther strength­en the en­ti­ty’s over­all op­er­a­tions and its com­pli­ance ef­forts.

A re­lease is­sued from the min­istry yes­ter­day said the MoU was signed on Wednes­day. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul said his min­istry wel­comed the con­tin­ued part­ner­ship with the CBP as the agency over the years has al­ways pro­vid­ed the di­vi­sion with the nec­es­sary re­sources re­quired to pro­tect T&T’s bor­ders.

He not­ed the MoU fur­ther strength­ened the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the T&T and the US, adding, ‘We ex­press our sin­cer­est grat­i­tude for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to again work along­side each oth­er and the tremen­dous ben­e­fits to be de­rived from such a col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

Chargé d’Af­faires Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz al­so added that the agree­ment for­malised com­mon com­mit­ment to ad­dress the chal­lenges of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty which threat­ens our shared val­ues and in­ter­ests, mak­ing both coun­tries more se­cure, and pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for the whole Caribbean re­gion.

Mean­while, Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion Yas­min Har­ris, who was al­so pleased to con­tin­ue the re­la­tion­ship with the US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion said, “We ap­pre­ci­ate their con­tin­ued sup­port in the pro­vi­sion of train­ing and oth­er ini­tia­tives to strength­en our en­force­ment and bor­der pro­tec­tion ef­forts.”