Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Key Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) in­vestors and pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers trav­elled to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da this week to present con­crete in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, un­der the Glob­al Gate­way In­vest­ment Agen­da, to Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS).

The meet­ing took place on Mon­day in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion­er for In­ter­na­tion­al Part­ner­ships Jut­ta Urpi­lainen and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Eu­ro­pean Union Mem­ber States met with Caribbean coun­tries on the side-lines of SIDS4.

The ar­eas of op­por­tu­ni­ties in­clud­ed the fight against sar­gas­sum, dig­i­tal tran­si­tion, mar­itime con­nec­tiv­i­ty, wa­ter, and en­er­gy. Caribbean coun­tries were able to present their pri­or­i­ties and en­gage with EU in­vestors.

Ac­cord­ing to an EU state­ment on Tues­day, it was the first po­lit­i­cal lev­el meet­ing be­tween the Caribbean and the EU since the sig­na­ture of the Samoa Agree­ment in No­vem­ber 2023, which pro­vid­ed a frame­work for the EU’s co­op­er­a­tion with 79 coun­tries of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of African, Caribbean, and Pa­cif­ic States. T&T was rep­re­sent­ed at the meet­ing by the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.

Urpi­lainen said, “We have over 130 projects aimed at ad­vanc­ing the green, dig­i­tal, and fair triple tran­si­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. One of the nov­el­ties of Glob­al Gate­way is that to mo­bilise the lev­el of in­vest­ment need­ed to make a dif­fer­ence, we are bring­ing to­geth­er pub­lic and pri­vate fi­nance. I am hap­py to ex­change with Eu­ro­pean com­pa­nies and Caribbean part­ners to iden­ti­fy ob­sta­cles and op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­creased Eu­ro­pean in­vest­ments in the re­gion.”

He went fur­ther in say­ing, “In this pe­ri­od of geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion and in­sta­bil­i­ty, the EU-Caribbean part­ner­ship stands as a bea­con of hope: nat­ur­al part­ners unit­ed by a com­mon vi­sion for a fair­er, green­er, and more sus­tain­able fu­ture. To­day, we be­come part­ners of choice, as we cel­e­brate the Caribbean pro­to­col of the Samoa agree­ment, which – un­der­pinned by the Glob­al Gate­way In­vest­ment Agen­da – en­ables us to deep­en the co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Caribbean states and the EU.”