T&T and Japan are seek­ing to de­vel­op fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the mu­tu­al ben­e­fit of both coun­tries.

This was the fo­cus of talks that took place yes­ter­day be­tween Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon and new­ly-ap­point­ed Japan­ese Am­bas­sador to T&T Dr Aki­ma Umeza­wa.

Gopee-Scoon, who re­ceived a cour­tesy call from Umeza­wa, em­pha­sised T&T’s thrust to­wards di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and the at­trac­tive­ness of the lo­cal mar­ket to in­vestors due to this coun­try’s trade agree­ments in the re­gion, which of­fer easy mar­ket ac­cess.

In a news re­lease, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try said the min­is­ter not­ed this coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts, in­clud­ing its em­pha­sis on in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in busi­ness process out­sourc­ing/ICT, nearshore man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture and agro-pro­cess­ing, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion, com­mer­cial mar­itime, film pro­duc­tion and re­new­able en­er­gy.

The re­lease added Umeza­wa ex­pressed great in­ter­est in T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan, mar­vel­ling that “hit­ting met­al with a stick could make such melo­di­ous mu­sic.”

He al­so shared that many Japan­ese busi­ness­es may not know of the many op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered in the re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly through this coun­try’s new spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone regime. 

The re­lease added that over the pe­ri­od 2019 to 2023, T&T’s ex­ports to Japan ex­hib­it­ed a steady up­ward trend with ex­ports in­creas­ing by 1,327 per cent over the pe­ri­od, go­ing from TT$15 mil­lion in 2019 to TT$216 mil­lion in 2023.

This coun­try’s top ex­ports to Japan in 2023 in­clud­ed both en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy prod­ucts such as methanol, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas, x-ray tubes and nat­ur­al as­phalt.

That same year, T&T’s im­ports from Japan amount­ed to TT$1.6 bil­lion and in­clud­ed non-en­er­gy prod­ucts such as mo­tor car spark plugs, seam­less gas line pipe, diesel goods ve­hi­cles, drill pipe for oil and pis­ton en­gines. 

The re­lease al­so not­ed that T&T and Japan es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions on May 22, 1964, mak­ing this year the 61st an­niver­sary.

T&T will par­tic­i­pate in the World Ex­po­si­tion 2025 (Ex­po 2025), which will be held in Os­a­ka, Kan­sai, Japan, from April 13 to Oc­to­ber 13.

The Ex­po is or­gan­ised by the Japan As­so­ci­a­tion for the 2025 World Ex­po­si­tion.