The Gov­ern­ment is ne­go­ti­at­ing for Ar­gen­tin­ian tech­ni­cal co-op­er­a­tion in agri­cul­tur­al projects and in the de­vel­op­ment of the com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) sec­tor. The an­nounce­ment was made by Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan at the Ar­gen­tine Em­bassy on Fri­day dur­ing Ar­genti­na in­de­pen­dence day cel­e­bra­tions.

Ram­bachan said Gov­ern­ment would be seek­ing Ar­gen­tin­ian ad­vice and ex­per­tise in in­te­grat­ed pest man­age­ment and sur­veil­lance, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­niques for quar­an­tine pests, erad­i­ca­tion of Bru­cel­losis and dairy pro­duc­tion, in ad­di­tion to the CNG field. He said Ar­genti­na was far ahead of many coun­tries in the study and use of CNG.

He added that the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs had al­ready ben­e­fit­ed from Ar­gen­tin­ian pest con­trol and dairy pro­duc­tion co-op­er­a­tion. Co-op­er­a­tion has aid­ed in strength­en­ing ties be­tween the two coun­tries. Ac­cord­ing to the Ar­gen­tine am­bas­sador to T&T, Marce­lo Salvi­o­lo, in 2011 Ar­genti­na pur­chased US$1 bil­lion in nat­ur­al liq­ue­fied gas from T&T.

This coun­try on the oth­er hand, re­ceives var­i­ous Ar­gen­tin­ian ex­ports such as wines, soy and olive oil, milk, con­cen­trat­ed juice and sweets, he said. Ram­bachan said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so ex­plor­ing the ways in which the health sec­tor could ben­e­fit from Ar­gen­tin­ian con­sul­ta­tion. Agri­cul­tur­al co-op­er­a­tion will be car­ried out in con­junc­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.