Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is calling on T&T's manufacturers to move beyond their comfort zone as the Government looks to them to diversify the country's main export markets. Persad-Bissessar made the point when she delivered the feature address at Tuesday night's 2010 Prime Minister's Exporter of the Year Awards, which was held at the Diplomatic Centre.
The awards, while held in the Prime Minister's names, are organised by the Business Development Company.
She called on local manufacturers to aggressively seek out new markets in Latin America and she said that after consultations with private sector associations, the Government believed the new frontier is is Central America
She said: "We are, at present, preparing to complete a Partial Scope Trade Agreement with Panama. This reciprocal trade agreement will allow limited number products and services from Trinidad and Tobago to enter the Panamanian market. In this regard, I will encourage our exporters to take advantage of this opportunity."
The Prime Minister also said that it was necessary to leverage "the entrepreneurial skills, talents and networking prowess of our Diaspora in North America and Europe."
After consulting with the key private sector associations, we believe Central America should be the next frontier for our exporters. Both the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Trade have given their commitment to develop closer economic and trade ties with this region, and I am assured that more Partial Scope Trade Agreements will be signed with other countries in Central America, shortly.
One clearly underutilised tool in the engagement of foreign policy and trade has been the opportunities which can be grasped by leveraging the entrepreneurial skills, talents and networking prowess of our Diaspora in North America and Europe. She called restaurants selling Trinidadian food in the Diaspora ambassadors for the country "promoting our food, our culture, our way of life in a foreign land." She said the Government will be developing greater economic linkages among the people of Caribbean Diaspora market and that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been mandated to craft a Diasporic Trade Policy which will guide our relationships.