Sev­er­al new com­pa­nies from Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) are eye­ing the Guyana mar­ket ac­cord­ing to Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Tri­cia Coos­al.

Guyana and T&T share long-stand­ing re­la­tions, al­low­ing nu­mer­ous com­pa­nies to es­tab­lish a pres­ence here over the years. But now, more com­pa­nies are in­ter­est­ed in the Guyana mar­ket.

“Now we are see­ing a new emer­gence of new com­pa­nies who want to en­ter the (Guyana) mar­ket, so we think that trade should be in­creased,” Coos­al said dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view with the News Room, a news agency based in Guyana..

The TTMA Pres­i­dent was keen on not­ing that trade in­ter­est in Guyana is noth­ing new. In fact, she said that fre­quent trade mis­sions from the Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion ev­i­dence just how in­ter­est­ed Trinida­di­an pri­vate sec­tor play­ers have been.

The most re­cent trade mis­sion was on March 22, and a new Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) for en­hanced co­op­er­a­tion was inked with the Guyana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (GM­SA).

Be­cause of this ev­i­dent in­ter­est, Coos­al be­lieves that ef­forts to re­move in­tra-re­gion­al trade bar­ri­ers are cru­cial. Once re­moved, it will be eas­i­er for more com­pa­nies to in­ten­si­fy trade be­tween the two coun­tries.

As such, she high­light­ed that the TTMA has been lob­by­ing the Trinida­di­an au­thor­i­ties on re­mov­ing those bar­ri­ers. The body is al­so work­ing along­side its Guyanese coun­ter­part to iden­ti­fy a list of much-need­ed goods whose trade is hin­dered by cer­tain bar­ri­ers.

But Coos­al al­so be­lieves that the re­moval of trade bar­ri­ers should be a key fo­cus of the wider Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM). The chal­lenges are re­gion-wide, she lament­ed.

“I think the Caribbean as a whole, if we deal with the bar­ri­ers … we can over­come some of the is­sues in­clud­ing phy­tosan­i­tary reg­u­la­tions.

“I think it will help us great­ly in se­cur­ing food se­cu­ri­ty for the re­gion,” Coos­al posit­ed.

Based on re­cent state­ments at an Agri-in­vest­ment in Guyana and at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM in Suri­name, re­gion­al lead­ers ap­pear keen on re­mov­ing those bar­ri­ers.

Spe­cif­ic fo­cus has been di­rect­ed to­wards non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers such as quo­tas, em­bar­goes, sanc­tions and levies. And this re­newed fo­cus comes amid an ag­gres­sive in­tra-re­gion­al agen­da be­ing pushed by Guyana.

Source: https://news­room.gy/