The in­vi­ta­tion by Sau­di Ara­bia to Cari­com lead­ers for a sum­mit in Riyadh this week that had Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley jet­ting out of the coun­try yes­ter­day, is with­in a broad­er con­text than what Cari­com and the Gov­ern­ment have dis­closed.

Just days from now, on No­vem­ber 28, the 173rd Gen­er­al As­sem­bly of the Unit­ed Na­tions will vote to de­cide which coun­try will host the 2030 World Ex­po, and the three com­pet­ing cities are Bu­san in South Ko­rea, Rome in Italy and Riyadh, Sau­di Ara­bia.

This week’s sum­mit, there­fore, is no co­in­ci­dence and is of no small sig­nif­i­cance, con­sid­er­ing that the last ex­po held in Dubai re­alised a ben­e­fit to the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates of US$42 bil­lion and at­tract­ed 24 mil­lion vis­i­tors be­tween Oc­to­ber 2021 and March 2022.

Japan, which will host the up­com­ing 2025 event in Os­a­ka, es­ti­mates it will at­tract 30 mil­lion peo­ple and earn a min­i­mum of $15 bil­lion from it.

Fur­ther­more, the in­vest­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al pres­tige that come with host­ing the events con­tribute to sub­se­quent years of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.

Cari­com, there­fore, with vot­ing pow­er of 15 full mem­bers and five as­so­ci­at­ed coun­tries, is worth woo­ing.

When the UN As­sem­bly is called to or­der in two weeks’ time, it’s the hope that those who sought to sweet­en the pot best will get the sup­port of the re­gion in re­turn.

South Ko­rea’s Prime Min­is­ter Han Duck-soo be­came the first per­son of such rank to vis­it T&T when he came in Ju­ly this year for the 45th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence, promis­ing to in­crease his coun­try’s con­tri­bu­tion to the Ko­rea-Cari­com Co­op­er­a­tion Fund five­fold in 2024 dur­ing his vis­it.

Al­so, just days ago, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, met with a del­e­ga­tion of the Sau­di Fund for De­vel­op­ment, where he was told that T&T could ben­e­fit from the US$30 bil­lion in the fund.

To add to the cur­ry favour, Sau­di Ara­bia’s Crown Prince and Prime Min­is­ter Mo­hammed bin Salman, who has been at the fore­front of Riyadh’s pro­mo­tion as host of the 2030 Ex­po, will co-chair the Cari­com-Sau­di Sum­mit.

Cari­com and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bar­gain­ing po­si­tions sel­dom come as strong as these, as this sum­mit presents a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to seek, from one of the world’s rich­est coun­tries, mean­ing­ful re­turns that will ben­e­fit our peo­ple.

Against this back­drop, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley is du­ty-bound to seek di­rect ben­e­fits for T&T through these talks.

The state­ment by his of­fice on his de­par­ture not­ed that lead­ers are sched­uled to par­tic­i­pate in is­sues not just of glob­al and in­ter-re­gion­al con­cerns, but on bi­lat­er­al mat­ters as well.

The ben­e­fits of such talks can­not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly if, by way of skil­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions, we are able to se­cure the right in­vest­ments need­ed to im­prove our health­care and safe­ty sys­tems, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­ty and a stronger so­cial safe­ty frame­work.

We have seen good ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der this Gov­ern­ment that helped re­vive the Drag­on Field gas deal with Venezuela and ex­pect more pos­i­tive news when Dr Row­ley trav­els to Lon­don in De­cem­ber to dis­cuss the own­er­ship re­struc­ture of At­lantic LNG to bring more val­ue to T&T.

We trust that Dr Row­ley’s Sau­di trip will like­wise re­sult in a win for our na­tion.