Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, met with a of­fi­cials from both Chi­na and Ghana on Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing the Min­istry's com­mu­ni­ca­tion team, a del­e­ga­tion from the Jiang­su Provin­cial Peo­ple’s Gov­ern­ment of Chi­na, led by Fang Wei, Vice Gov­er­nor of the Provin­cial gov­ern­ment met with the Min­is­ter at the Min­istry's Head Of­fice in Port of Spain.

The Min­istry said dur­ing the meet­ing, "Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon un­der­scored the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­mote and fa­cil­i­tate trade and in­vest­ment with Chi­na, and recog­nised the im­por­tance of 51 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries. She wel­comed the in­ter­est by Jiang­su of­fi­cials, and point­ed to sev­er­al ben­e­fits of in­vest­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic strength, po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, high­ly ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion, tar­iff-free ac­cess to nu­mer­ous mar­kets, and the new in­vest­ment-friend­ly Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones (SEZ) regime."

Wei not­ed the strong re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries and the de­sire to fur­ther re­in­force eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al ties at the provin­cial lev­el. As a re­sult, the Chi­nese of­fi­cials do­nat­ed TT$300,000 to the up­com­ing Steel­pan Tuner Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme.

The Min­istry said the pro­gramme will be im­ple­ment­ed by the MIC-In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy to fos­ter en­tre­pre­neur­ship in the steel­pan in­dus­try, while pre­serv­ing the cul­tur­al her­itage of pan man­u­fac­tur­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

Lat­er on Fri­day, a 13-mem­ber Ghana­ian team paid a cour­tesy call to the Min­is­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease, Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon ex­pressed plea­sure in the grow­ing pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship be­tween both coun­tries and un­der­scored T&T’s in­ter­est in en­hanc­ing trade, busi­ness, in­vest­ment, and trav­el ties with Ghana. The Min­is­ter al­so shared an overview of de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T, point­ing to the en­er­gy, non-en­er­gy and agri­cul­tur­al sec­tors.

The Ghanan­ian group in­clud­ed T&T's hon­orary con­sul to Ghana, Hilton John Mitchell; man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Pru­den­tial Bank Ghana, Be­nard Gye­bi; banker, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Frank Afari Anka­ma; co-founder of the Ghana/Trinidad and To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, Vic­tor Owusu; man­ag­ing part­ner of Phoenix Africa Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, Michael Darko; man­ag­ing part­ner of Ag­beno­to and As­so­ciates, Mawue­na Ag­beno­to; coun­try man­ag­er, CAGL Oil­fields, Aw­al Karim; di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions, Con­sol­i­dat­ed Bank Ghana, Samuel Bar­ketey; man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Donkor In­sur­ance Agency, Col­orado, USA, Yaw Donkor; gen­er­al coun­sel, Oil & Gas/ En­er­gy Reg­u­la­tor, busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive Kwame Bona Siri­boe; in­de­pen­dent man­age­ment con­sul­tant and ad­vi­sor Dr. George Ad­do; CEO of Med­phar­ma Al­liance In­ter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed, Yaw Asamoah; and su­per­in­ten­dent Karim At­u­lik of the Ghana Po­lice Ser­vice, (head of op­er­a­tions), West­ern Re­gion.

They were ac­com­pa­nied on their vis­it to the Min­istry by Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Roger Roach.

In March last year, Gopee-Scoon led a pri­vate sec­tor del­e­ga­tion on a six-day trade mis­sion to Ghana. The mis­sion, or­gan­ised by the TTMA and Ex­porTT took place from March 12 to 17, 2024.

The trade mis­sion com­prised 21 com­pa­nies from the food and bev­er­age, chem­i­cal and house­hold, con­struc­tion and ap­par­el and tex­tiles and fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor. Al­so on the trade mis­sion were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and sev­er­al trade re­lat­ed state agen­cies in­clud­ing the Ex­port Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ex­im­Bank) and NED­CO.