Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Cab­i­net has not dis­cussed any with­draw­al from Cari­com.

She made the com­ment yes­ter­day, amid pub­lic con­cern that the cur­rent dis­cord be­tween her­self and some of her re­gion­al coun­ter­parts may re­sult in T&T part­ing ways with the re­gion­al body.

Asked if she was con­sid­er­ing such a move, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, via a What­sApp mes­sage, said, “That has not been dis­cussed by Cab­i­net.”

A few weeks ago, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had point­ed out that T&T was look­ing at trad­ing op­tions out­side of Cari­com but said then she was not con­sid­er­ing for­mal­ly with­draw­ing from the body.

Asked yes­ter­day if that stance had changed, fol­low­ing her re­cent claims that Cari­com was now an “un­re­li­able part­ner” and that it was “sup­port­ive” of Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro regime, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Not at this time.”

Ac­cord­ing to Cari­com, T&T is sched­uled to as­sume chair­man­ship of the re­gion­al body from Ju­ly to De­cem­ber 2027.

Yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath al­so said he didn’t think Per­sad-Bisses­sar was plan­ning to pull out of Cari­com de­spite the cur­rent tense at­mos­phere among re­gion­al lead­ers over the es­ca­lat­ing US-Venezuela ten­sion.

“She’s ac­knowl­edged that Cari­com has chal­lenges and there are dis­putes among var­i­ous lead­ers, and Cari­com doesn’t have the una­nim­i­ty it speaks about,” Ra­goonath said.

“I’m not sure what T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter will do, but she’s ad­mit­ted there’s need to fix Cari­com. Whether she’ll be part of that fix­ing is left to be seen.”

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Stu­art Young said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­tin­ued at­tack on Cari­com and its mem­bers is not on­ly reck­less and un­war­rant­ed but is al­so dan­ger­ous and de­struc­tive.

On his X so­cial me­dia ac­count, Young said, “Some­one must ex­plain to her how im­por­tant Cari­com is for our man­u­fac­tur­ers and our econ­o­my—T&T is not ‘win­ning’.” Young added on the UNC’s slo­gan that “When UNC wins, every­body wins.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dale Par­son said they hadn’t seen any de­crease in im­ports from Cari­com due to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion among the lead­ers.

“The de­cel­er­a­tion we saw be­fore is now ac­cel­er­at­ing in the sec­ond half of the year, par­tic­u­lar­ly with an in­crease from An­tigua,” Par­son said.

But sev­er­al oth­ers across the busi­ness sec­tor said they are look­ing on with con­cern and watch­ing Cari­com keen­ly, “es­pe­cial­ly in view of T&T’s frag­ile econ­o­my”. They not­ed that with the glob­al econ­o­my, every area of in­vest­ment and trade will be need­ed in 2026 and be­yond and “hoped Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands that”.

Gas­ton Browne wish­es PM a Mer­ry Christ­mas

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne yes­ter­day sought to down­play any sug­ges­tion of a diplo­mat­ic rift be­tween his coun­try and T&T, as he took to Face­book to sig­nal con­tin­ued good­will be­tween the two coun­tries.

In a brief post, Prime Min­is­ter Browne wrote: “Gassy Dread (a self-im­posed nick­name) loves his Trinida­di­an broth­ers and sis­ters and no fa­mil­ial dis­pute can change that. Kam­la—sea­son’s greet­ings.”

Al­so yes­ter­day, Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett, in a sep­a­rate state­ment to the body’s end of the year mes­sage, in­vit­ed Cari­com stake­hold­ers, in the re­gion and be­yond, “... To move for­ward to­geth­er as we work to achieve our vi­sion of a ‘Com­mu­ni­ty for All’, that is re­silient, pros­per­ous and unit­ed.”

Bar­nett said, “As we ap­proach this fes­tive sea­son, we re­flect on the chal­lenges the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) has faced dur­ing the year that have thrown our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in­to sharp re­lief and, more than ever, un­der­scored the pur­pose and val­ue of a unit­ed re­gion.

“On the heels of the dev­as­ta­tion caused in sev­er­al Mem­ber States by Hur­ri­cane Beryl in 2024, in 2025, Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa left death and de­struc­tion in its wake in Ja­maica and in Haiti. Re­cov­ery will take con­sid­er­able re­sources and time. In ad­di­tion, un­prece­dent­ed geopo­lit­i­cal head­winds threat­ened ex­port earn­ings, re­gion­al peace, and sov­er­eign­ty.

“Amid these and oth­er chal­lenges, the com­mu­ni­ty’s char­ac­ter­is­tic re­silience shone through. We pulled to­geth­er ur­gent­ly to help ad­dress crit­i­cal needs in the af­ter­math of the dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­canes and piv­ot­ed cre­ative­ly to safe­guard busi­ness­es and liveli­hoods.”

Bar­nett not­ed progress in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), as Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines com­menced full free move­ment of per­sons among them­selves, paving the way for in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and peo­ple-to-peo­ple con­tacts.

Bar­nett added, “As we pre­pare to em­brace a New Year, I have every con­fi­dence that the com­mu­ni­ty will con­tin­ue to re­spond with clar­i­ty and re­solve to our chal­lenges. The out­comes on trade, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, com­mu­ni­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion, repa­ra­tions, gov­er­nance, hu­man de­vel­op­ment is­sues and cli­mate change from this year’s Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing those held in Bar­ba­dos in Feb­ru­ary and in Ja­maica in Ju­ly, are clear in­di­ca­tions of the strate­gic fo­cus and com­mit­ment to ac­tion.”

Cari­com’s im­por­tance to T&T

The 2025 Re­view of the Econ­o­my re­leased by the Min­istry of Fi­nance in late 2025 re­veals a com­plex pic­ture, stat­ing that while the en­er­gy sec­tor faced struc­tur­al chal­lenges, the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor re­mained a pri­ma­ry en­gine for re­gion­al trade.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port:

To­tal Cari­com Ex­ports (Oct 2024-June 2025)

Ex­ports to the re­gion reached ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$5.95 bil­lion (US$877 mil­lion) for the first nine months of the fis­cal year.

The mer­chan­dise trade sur­plus with Cari­com for those same nine months was record­ed at TT$4.92 bil­lion. 

Food and Bev­er­age re­mained the top-per­form­ing non-en­er­gy sub-sec­tor, led by aer­at­ed wa­ters, ce­re­al prepa­ra­tions (bis­cuits), and aro­mat­ic bit­ters.

Do­mes­tic ce­ment sales saw a slight in­crease of 2.1% in ear­ly 2025, though over­all con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty was de­scribed as “sub­dued” com­pared to 2024.