Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fight against COVID-19 is once again ben­e­fit­ting from the gen­eros­i­ty of Chi­na fol­low­ing a re­cent do­na­tion of med­ical sup­plies, in­clu­sive of hun­dreds of thou­sands of gloves and sy­ringes, on Thurs­day 9th De­cem­ber 2021.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs re­ports that the do­na­tion from the Gov­ern­ment of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, which is val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$75,000 (RMB 500,000), com­prised 170,000 gloves and 170,000 sy­ringes.  The Min­istry ex­plained it is “the ma­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion of an of­fer made by the Gov­ern­ment of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na in De­cem­ber 2020 at a Spe­cial Meet­ing on COVID-19 in the con­text of Chi­na-Caribbean Con­sul­ta­tions.”

These lat­est med­ical sup­plies do­nat­ed by Chi­na will be used in T&T’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem to treat COVID-19 pa­tients and con­tribute to the mit­i­ga­tion of the spread of the virus.  They come in the wake of Chi­na’s do­na­tion of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dos­es of its WHO-ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cine, Sinopharm, to this coun­try alone over the past year.

Dur­ing the brief Han­dover Cer­e­mo­ny for the med­ical equip­ment, Dr Amery Browne, Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, not­ed the gen­eros­i­ty of those do­na­tions, at a time when vac­cines were not avail­able to the coun­try.  He al­so point­ed to a more re­cent, siz­able do­na­tion of med­ical sup­plies in Oc­to­ber 2021.

“These are a tes­ta­ment to the strength of the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go and Chi­na,” the Min­is­ter said, as he thanked His Ex­cel­len­cy Fang Qiu, Am­bas­sador of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na for the De­cem­ber do­na­tion.

Am­bas­sador Fang stat­ed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic still posed a chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of new surges of in­fec­tion oc­cur­ring around the world.

Ex­press­ing the view that co­op­er­a­tion was re­quired to com­bat the pan­dem­ic, the Am­bas­sador not­ed that this was the ap­proach tak­en by Trinidad and To­ba­go and Chi­na.

In ad­di­tion to han­dover of med­ical sup­plies by Am­bas­sador Fang to Min­is­ter Browne and the sign­ing of the hand-over cer­tifi­cates, both men dis­cussed the sta­tus of re­la­tions be­tween their coun­tries and pos­si­ble strate­gies for co­op­er­a­tion in the post COVID-19 era.

The Min­istry’s state­ment says both par­ties agreed that there is po­ten­tial for fur­ther co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Chi­na in fields of in­ter­est and im­por­tance to both coun­tries, with the Min­istry giv­ing a com­mit­ment to fol­low up on the mat­ters dis­cussed with the rel­e­vant Gov­ern­ment min­istries.

Am­bas­sador Fang em­pha­sised Chi­na’s in­ter­est in strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion with the Caribbean in the post-COVID-19 era and, in this re­gard, re­ferred to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Chi­na-Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre.

Ar­eas of pri­or­i­ty iden­ti­fied by the Chi­nese Am­bas­sador in­clude pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion; food se­cu­ri­ty; COVID-19; fi­nanc­ing for de­vel­op­ment; cli­mate change and the green econ­o­my; in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion; and dig­i­tal econ­o­my and con­nec­tiv­i­ty.  He al­so re­ferred to the Glob­al De­vel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive, point­ing out that it falls well with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy 2016-2030 (Vi­sion 2030), in­clud­ing this coun­try’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion goals.