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Monday, June 16, 2025

Trips by PM to Ghana, India meant to ‘grow T&T economy’

by

Jensen La Vende
392 days ago
20240520
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his wife Sharon during their recent visit to Ghana.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his wife Sharon during their recent visit to Ghana.

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Tout­ing him­self as the coun­try’s num­ber one sales­man, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his trips to Ghana and In­dia in the past two weeks were to ce­ment a shift in the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

Row­ley ad­dressed the me­dia at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s Con­fer­ence Room up­on his re­turn and said it was im­per­a­tive that the coun­try di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my away from oil and gas. He said his vis­its to Ghana and In­dia were aimed at do­ing just that.

He said Ghana is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to grow as the coun­try has a pop­u­la­tion of 34 mil­lion and a gate­way to an­oth­er 200 mil­lion po­ten­tial cus­tomers.

“There comes a time when you have to un­der­stand that there are lim­its with­in your own bor­der es­pe­cial­ly if you are and have been a trad­ing na­tion,” he said.

Row­ley said the need for the peo­ple of Ghana to be in­tro­duced to T&T is im­por­tant so that when busi­ness agree­ments are so­lid­i­fied there will be buy-in from the pop­u­la­tion of over 30 mil­lion.

He added that there is a con­tract to be signed that will im­pact busi­ness­es in both coun­tries. He said five to ten per cent of the busi­ness there is larg­er than Cari­com.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that Ghana Gas rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ex­pect­ed in the coun­try next month to strength­en ties with this coun­try. In March, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon led a del­e­ga­tion of busi­ness­men to Ghana. Ear­li­er in his me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said Re­pub­lic Bank was do­ing well in Ghana hav­ing opened more branch­es there than in this coun­try.  

Re­gard­ing his trip to In­dia, Row­ley said dis­cus­sions were had about this coun­try’s re­fin­ery.

How­ev­er, he is doubt­ful that the Jam­na­gar Re­fin­ery will be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing it. 

Jam­na­gar Re­fin­ery is owned by Re­liance In­dus­tries. Row­ley was in­vit­ed to In­dia by busi­ness mogul Mukesh Am­bani, the own­er of Re­liance In­dus­tries to deep­en dis­cus­sion for the Re­liance Group to con­struct a crick­et acad­e­my in Trinci­ty on lands once giv­en to Pan Trin­ba­go. 

Asked about any dis­cus­sion re­gard­ing the pur­chas­ing of the de­funct Petrotrin Re­fin­ery, Row­ley said it was men­tioned that T&T owned a re­fin­ery but giv­en the Jam­na­gar Re­fin­ery’s busi­ness mod­el, he was doubt­ful.  

“The key in­ter­est is not in the re­fin­ery, but they are in­vestors, so we don’t know if they see an op­por­tu­ni­ty and want to put in a pro­pos­al, but there are oth­ers who have done that,” he said.

Row­ley added that there are some pro­pos­als in hand to pur­chase the re­fin­ery which will have to be ad­dressed by the end of the month.


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