Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh- am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt
 
The city of Port of Spain has signed a Let­ter of In­tent with Shang­hai, sig­nalling the po­ten­tial to be­come sis­ter cities and fur­ther strength­en bi­lat­er­al ties on Tues­day 15 No­vem­ber. 

This LOI is an agree­ment doc­u­ment signed by both par­ties, legal­ly out­lin­ing their in­ten­tion of do­ing busi­ness to­geth­er.  

At a small cer­e­mo­ny held at the May­or’s Bal­cony at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, May­or of PoS, Al­der­man Joel Mar­tinez and May­or of the Shang­hai Mu­nic­i­pal Peo­ple’s Gov­ern­ment, Gong Zheng signed the let­ter, of­fi­cial­ly seal­ing their in­ten­tion to de­vel­op fur­ther both coun­tries and even­tu­al­ly open doors to more prospects. 

“To­day both Port of Spain and Shang­hai will of­fi­cial­ly sig­ni­fy our in­ten­tions to con­tin­ue work­ing to­geth­er to­wards our cities’ de­vel­op­ment in the ar­eas of fi­nance, trade, cul­ture, sports, pub­lic health and ed­u­ca­tion with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that our friend­ship will lead to us be­com­ing Sis­ter Cities in the fu­ture,” stat­ed Mar­tinez. 

He added that this part­ner­ship promis­es ben­e­fits for both coun­tries, of which Trinidad has al­ready ben­e­fit­ted. 

“Port of Spain ben­e­fit­ted im­mense­ly from the land­mark projects com­plet­ed by the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group and some of our most icon­ic build­ings like our Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts and our Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence stood beau­ti­ful­ly be­cause of the group’s good work.” 

Zheng who was present via Zoom, al­so added that there were sev­er­al as­pects the coun­tries need­ed to en­hance their col­lab­o­ra­tion. 

“We need to en­hance our eco­nom­ic and trade co­op­er­a­tion, PoS and Shang­hai are both com­mer­cial and fi­nan­cial cen­tres in im­por­tant port cities, there­fore, there is a wide scope for co­op­er­a­tion we need to en­hance our cul­tur­al and tourism co­op­er­a­tion we need to strength­en our co­op­er­a­tion on pub­lic health."  

Zheng stat­ed that both coun­tries can have cul­tur­al ex­changes to fa­cil­i­tate a deep­er un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of each oth­er. 

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Dr Amery Browne, this cer­e­mo­ny “fur­ther con­cretizes an al­ready warm and fruit­ful re­la­tion­ship be­tween both cities and by ex­ten­sion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Chi­na.”  

Chi­nese Am­bas­sador to T&T Fang Qiu said this sign­ing “is a mile­stone for the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the city of Shang­hai and Port of Spain and al­so a mile­stone for the re­la­tion­ship be­tween our two coun­tries.” 
Al­so present at the event were the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Stu­art Young and the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon.