Raphael John-Lall

Char­tered ac­coun­tant and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, be­lieves that the vis­it of Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez to Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos last month shows that “Venezuela is open for busi­ness” and that T&T is not a top pri­or­i­ty for them.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Browne said that Ro­dríguez is now in the dri­ver’s seat, holds the reins of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er in Venezuela and she is now dis­play­ing that she is in charge.

“The act­ing Pres­i­dent of Venezuela is mak­ing sev­er­al points. She is the de fac­to and de ju­re leader of Venezuela and there­fore can in­ter­act with Cari­com coun­tries with­out ask­ing for per­mis­sion of any­one. Venezuela is open for busi­ness and will­ing to do busi­ness with Cari­com coun­tries and she has the au­thor­i­ty to make such de­ci­sions.”

He added that choos­ing Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos over T&T was a strate­gic move on Ro­dríguez’s part.

“Choos­ing to vis­it Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos be­fore Venezuela’s clos­est Cari­com neigh­bour T&T sig­nals that T&T is not con­sid­ered, or, at least, is con­sid­ered less that Grena­da or Bar­ba­dos. In oth­er words, she is snub­bing T&T for its un­friend­ly ac­tions to Venezuela. In­deed, she said that Grena­da re­fused the place­ment of US radar in­stal­la­tions on Grena­di­an soil.”

He al­so re­ferred to the en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Venezuela and the en­er­gy multi­na­tion­als, say­ing it is still not clear if T&T would even­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit.

“Venezuela is ne­go­ti­at­ing with BP and Shell for ac­cess to gas fields in which T&T has an in­ter­est. It is not yet clear that ne­go­ti­a­tions ex­plic­it­ly con­sid­er T&T in­ter­ests. The key point is that, notwith­stand­ing T&T’s sup­port of the US, Venezuela is in the dri­ver’s seat not the US and not T&T.”

Ro­dríguez vis­it­ed Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos, two Cari­com mem­bers in April. How­ev­er, she has not of­fi­cial­ly giv­en her stance on T&T de­spite Port-of-Spain say­ing that a del­e­ga­tion will vis­it Venezuela in a few weeks to dis­cuss en­er­gy mat­ters.

In mid April, Ro­dríguez vis­it­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell where they held bi­lat­er­al talks span­ning trade, pol­i­tics and re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

Last week, Ro­dríguez vis­it­ed Bar­ba­dos where she al­so held talks in­volv­ing en­er­gy and trade with the coun­try’s Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley.

Ro­dríguez’ trips to the Caribbean come as there are up­beat pro­jec­tions about Venezuela’s econ­o­my and the in­ter­est of en­er­gy multi­na­tion­als in sign­ing new agree­ments with the coun­try.

Even bod­ies like the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) have re-es­tab­lished re­la­tions with Venezuela and the in­ter­na­tion­al body has pro­ject­ed a healthy 4.0 per cent gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) growth for Venezuela’s econ­o­my in 2026.

On April 24, Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias re­port­ed that Venezue­lan Trade Min­is­ter Jo­hann Ál­varez Márquez met with Venezue­lan com­pa­nies will­ing to do trade with Cari­com mem­ber states.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the meet­ing high­light­ed the im­por­tance of mak­ing progress in iden­ti­fy­ing the po­ten­tial ex­port prod­ucts to the Cari­com mar­ket and un­der­stand­ing the process­es of mar­ket­ing and adap­ta­tion to the re­quire­ments of Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.

They al­so re­viewed spe­cif­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties to mar­ket Venezue­lan prod­ucts with like­ly po­ten­tial in the Caribbean. These prod­ucts in­clude chick­en, eggs, cof­fee, oil, pas­ta, wheat flour, sausages, fruits, veg­eta­bles, and oth­er pro­duce.

In terms of lo­gis­tics, the par­tic­i­pants agreed on the im­por­tance of de­sign­ing a dis­tri­b­u­tion scheme by is­land, with vol­ume es­ti­mates and vi­able lo­gis­tics routes, es­pe­cial­ly to­wards near­by Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries such as Aru­ba, Cu­ra­cao and Bonaire, as well as oth­er strate­gic des­ti­na­tions in the Caribbean.

Econ­o­mist and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Busi­ness Guardian that he does not be­lieve that Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent is at­tempt­ing to iso­late T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion in Cari­com.

“She is not to­tal­ly sidelin­ing T&T as she is mak­ing agree­ments di­rect­ly with for­eign com­pa­nies that are deal­ing with oil and gas in T&T. She seems to be get­ting less in­volved with the T&T Gov­ern­ment and its na­tion­al com­pa­nies. This could be in re­sponse to the crit­i­cism from the T&T Gov­ern­ment which con­tin­ued even af­ter Pres­i­dent Maduro was tak­en out. T&T has al­so tak­en a much clos­er po­si­tion to Guyana in its dis­pute with Venezuela, even of­fer­ing the US a base in T&T in the event of a con­flict be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.”

Gon­za­les added that the con­flict be­tween Venezuela and Guyana over the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion is an­oth­er rea­son why Venezuela is try­ing to gain sup­port in the Caribbean re­gion.

“Venezuela is al­so seek­ing to mo­bilise the rest of Cari­com, as it has al­ways done, to get, if not sup­port, at least some con­sid­er­a­tion of its po­si­tion on the Es­se­qui­bo. The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) is ex­pect­ed to rule soon and Venezuela is hop­ing to set­tle this mat­ter diplo­mat­i­cal­ly. This is not in­con­se­quen­tial for T&T as T&T could lose some trade to the rest of Cari­com due to a stronger Venezue­lan pres­ence there as it did through Petro­Caribe.”

Ex­pand­ing in­flu­ence

For­mer Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath told the Busi­ness Guardian Venezuela’s re­cent out­reach to Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da un­der Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent is best un­der­stood as a “strate­gic re­cal­i­bra­tion” and a “charm of­fen­sive” where­by Cara­cas ap­pears to be ex­pand­ing in­flu­ence in coun­tries where re­la­tion­ships are less com­plex and de­pen­dence, es­pe­cial­ly on en­er­gy im­ports, is high­er.

He called Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter is a “re­gion­al heavy­weight” with “glob­al cred­i­bil­i­ty.”

“Small­er is­lands are en­er­gy im­porters. The re­la­tion­ship with T&T has be­come more com­pli­cat­ed be­cause of T&T’s open sup­port of the US mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion in the re­gion as well as the in­tem­per­ate and undiplo­mat­ic lan­guage used by Per­sad-Bisses­sar. This prompt­ed a vol­ley of threats from Venezuela cul­mi­nat­ing in the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T be­ing de­clared ‘per­sona non gra­ta’.’”

At the same time, he said re­marks by T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter about look­ing be­yond Cari­com do not make these de­vel­op­ments ir­rel­e­vant.

“In­stead, they height­en the stakes. As Venezuela deep­ens ties with­in the re­gion, any dis­tanc­ing by Trinidad and To­ba­go risks re­duc­ing its re­gion­al in­flu­ence just as ex­ter­nal ac­tors ex­pand theirs.”

He said this mat­ters be­cause the eco­nom­ic up­side of an open Venezue­lan mar­ket is sig­nif­i­cant.

“En­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion re­mains the largest op­por­tu­ni­ty with ac­cess to Venezue­lan gas re­quired to ex­tend the lifes­pan of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Liquei­fied Nat­ur­al gas (LNG) and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries. Be­yond en­er­gy, the Venezue­lan pop­u­la­tion of 29 mil­lion rep­re­sents a size­able near­by mar­ket for man­u­fac­tured goods, processed foods, and fish­eries prod­ucts, with low trans­port costs of­fer­ing a nat­ur­al com­pet­i­tive edge.”

He added that there are al­so op­por­tu­ni­ties in bank­ing, in­sur­ance, and en­gi­neer­ing, as well as in lo­gis­tics, where T&T could po­si­tion it­self as a trans­ship­ment hub be­tween Venezuela and the wider Caribbean.

“Even mi­gra­tion, of­ten seen as a chal­lenge, could be lever­aged through struc­tured labour arrange­ments. The clear strate­gic risk if re­la­tions re­main strained, is that Trinidad and To­ba­go may for­feit first-mover ad­van­tage in a re­open­ing Venezue­lan econ­o­my.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said the key ques­tion is whether T&T is choos­ing to step away from the re­gion­al stage just as oth­ers are prepar­ing to step for­ward in­to it.

“In that sce­nario, oth­er Caribbean states, or ex­tra-re­gion­al play­ers, could cap­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties that ge­og­ra­phy and his­to­ry once placed firm­ly with­in T&T’s reach.”

Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da deals

In April, Venezuela and Grena­da re­in­forced bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion dur­ing a meet­ing with Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell which fo­cused on en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, and trade, aim­ing for shared pros­per­i­ty and strate­gic re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment.

This meet­ing fol­lows Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell’s vis­it to Venezuela on April 29, 2025, where a roadmap for strong eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion over the next two years was agreed.

The vis­it of Ro­dríguez to Bar­ba­dos re­sult­ed in an am­bi­tious strate­gic part­ner­ship span­ning food pro­duc­tion, en­er­gy in­vest­ment and lan­guage in­te­gra­tion.

Bar­ba­dos’ Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley framed the col­lab­o­ra­tion as a nec­es­sary shield against the glob­al pres­sures of in­fla­tion and frac­tured sup­ply chain

A key agree­ment would al­low Bar­ba­di­an farm­ers and the gov­ern­ment to pro­duce food di­rect­ly on Venezue­lan soil. This ini­tia­tive aims to sta­bilise food prices in Bar­ba­dos while lever­ag­ing the is­land’s lo­gis­tics to cre­ate an ex­port hub for the wider Caribbean and be­yond.

Mot­t­ley al­so ex­pressed a de­sire for the Bar­ba­dos Na­tion­al En­er­gy Com­pa­ny to ex­plore joint in­vest­ments in Venezue­lan oil and gas fields to en­sure long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.