Trinidad and To­ba­go has been laud­ed as an ide­al en­vi­ron­ment for the con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion and growth of Chi­nese busi­ness­es.

The praise came as the num­ber of ex­ports to Chi­na con­tin­ue to in­crease.

The mes­sage was de­liv­ered by the coun­try’s del­e­ga­tion that at­tend­ed the 4th Chi­na–Caribbean Eco­nom­ic and Trade Co­op­er­a­tion Fo­rum at Chi­na’s is­land province of Hainan over the week­end.

Speak­ing at the three-day meet­ing event, T&T Am­bas­sador to the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, Anal­isa Low, boast­ed that T&T was the first Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean coun­try to join Chi­na’s Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive, which led to an in­crease in ex­ports to Chi­na. 

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ports to Chi­na grew by 60 per cent, mov­ing from ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$1 bil­lion to TT$1.6 bil­lion. These ex­ports in­clud­ed en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy prod­ucts, methanol, aro­mat­ic bit­ters, nat­ur­al as­phalt and seafood prod­ucts,” Low said. 

Low added that for the same pe­ri­od, im­ports from Chi­na in­creased by 6.9 per cent to TT$5 bil­lion. 

The on­go­ing con­struc­tion of a new ter­mi­nal at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Lim­it­ed was al­so high­light­ed by Low as part of Chi­na’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing T&T’s eco­nom­ic growth. 

Ear­li­er this year, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­au­gu­rat­ed the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, which In­vestTT pres­i­dent Sek­ou Al­leyne said has drawn in­ter­est from Chi­nese and Hainan com­pa­nies look­ing to utilise the fa­cil­i­ty.

“That cre­ates a mod­el of T&T’s co­op­er­a­tion eco­nom­i­cal­ly with Chi­na and the plat­form for fur­ther at­tract­ing new busi­ness­es from Chi­na, which is what we are do­ing here to­day, [from] dif­fer­ent parts of Chi­na com­ing to use T&T as a plat­form for their ex­pan­sion in the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean area,” Al­leyne said. 

Fol­low­ing the fo­rum’s min­is­te­r­i­al con­fer­ence, Chi­na pledged to con­tin­ue to sup­port free trade co­op­er­a­tion with Caribbean coun­tries.