GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As glob­al trade wars con­tin­ue, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon is ad­vis­ing the pri­vate sec­tor to re­main vig­i­lant re­gard­ing the over­all trade land­scape.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia fol­low­ing the un­veil­ing of two new, state-of-the-art ma­chines by the Na­tion­al Flour Mills Ltd (NFM) on Tues­day, Gopee-Scoon said this coun­try is cur­rent­ly not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any trade is­sues apart from the fact that there is a need to en­sure that the pri­vate sec­tor re­al­ly needs to look at all pos­si­bil­i­ties with re­gard to its im­ports and the abil­i­ty to source im­ports from di­verse mar­kets.

The min­is­ter added the her min­istry is al­so al­ways "look­ing very keen­ly" at what is hap­pen­ing in the over­all mar­ket­place.

How­ev­er, she urged, "Our ex­porters, in the in­ter­est of en­sur­ing that they would al­ways have mar­kets for their goods, would need to look at al­ter­na­tive mar­kets and en­sur­ing that they will not be im­pact­ed by any trade is­sue that may arise.

"So again it's about re­main­ing alert, be­ing vig­i­lant and of course al­ways en­sur­ing that the ma­te­ri­als and goods are sourced from a di­verse range of coun­tries," Gopee-Scoon added.

On the lo­cal front, she said ad­vance­ments have been made, not­ing that the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture is on an ad­vanced pro­gramme to in­crease food pro­duc­tion.

"And it means, there­fore, that most fam­i­lies can in fact have a meal based on goods that are pro­duced in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Whether it's your veg­etable re­quire­ments or your chick­en and your fish and your flour etc all of those are pro­duced in Trinidad and To­ba­go," Gopee-Scoon ex­plained.

She said while she is pleased about this progress about grow­ing lo­cal thus far, there's still much work to be done. But at the same time, she not­ed the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture con­tin­ues to work with oth­er ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion to en­sure the food im­port bill is not on­ly re­duced but the pub­lic con­tin­ues to be en­cour­aged to grow what it eats.