Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is hop­ing to es­tab­lish a di­rect air link be­tween Ghana and T&T.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at Ju­bilee House in Ghana dur­ing his of­fi­cial vis­it, Row­ley ad­dressed a room of gov­ern­ment dig­ni­taries and ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Ghana-based busi­ness­es.

“I’m ex­pect­ing this mile­stone that we mark will man­i­fest it­self fur­ther in the kinds of con­tacts that we are try­ing to build,” he said.

“We do have a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of our cul­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ties and our de­sire to strength­en those bonds but, more im­por­tant­ly, in the eco­nom­ic side, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for us to con­cre­tise these ef­forts that we have been mak­ing since 2010 to have Ghana ben­e­fit from and have T&T ben­e­fit from col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween our two coun­tries.

“We are anx­ious­ly—through our state com­pa­ny the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and its per­son­nel— look­ing for­ward to tak­ing part in the gas pro­cess­ing busi­ness.”

Row­ley told the gath­er­ing he was proud of what our largest bank, Re­pub­lic Bank, was able to ac­com­plish by reach­ing out to Ghana be­cause we see Ghana as a gate­way.”

He boast­ed that the Caribbean had much to of­fer in­clud­ing recre­ation, which a di­rect air link will ser­vice.

“We hope and ex­pect that Africans, com­ing out of Ghana, once we es­tab­lish a mu­tu­al air ser­vices agree­ment and es­tab­lish a di­rect air ser­vice be­tween the Caribbean and Africa, we be­lieve there is tremen­dous po­ten­tial for eco­nom­ic growth and con­tacts to be made, in­vest­ments to be made and for recre­ation­al pur­pos­es.

“We anx­ious­ly await your re­sus­ci­ta­tion and re-es­tab­lish­ment of Ghana air­ways and as you get your new equip­ment we would like to an­tic­i­pate that one of the legs of Ghana Air­ways would be to Port-of-Spain.”

He said there is great po­ten­tial in the con­tin­ued and mu­tu­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween Ghana and T&T.

“We are al­so con­cerned about our food se­cu­ri­ty. We are very de­pen­dent on the im­por­ta­tion and con­sump­tion of north­ern hemi­sphere wheat prod­ucts and we have lost our own pro­duc­tion of ground pro­vi­sions large­ly be­cause we have lost the plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al.”

Row­ley said a lo­cal agri­cul­ture ex­pert, Dr John Al­leyne, trav­elled with him to Ghana and will re­main there af­ter the gov­ern­ment con­tin­gent leaves. Al­leyne is tak­ing ad­van­tage of an of­fer by the Ghana­ian Gov­ern­ment to learn about se­lect­ed plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al to es­tab­lish in T&T.

“So we have a lot to work on go­ing for­ward,” Row­ley said.

This is Row­ley’s sec­ond trip to Ghana since tak­ing of­fice. This time he is the guest of ho­n­our as the na­tion cel­e­brates its In­de­pen­dence Day to­day. He is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to T&T over the week­end.