Raphael John-Lall

An­tho­ny Aboud, chair­man of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), es­ti­mates more than US$500 mil­lion has been gen­er­at­ed over the last 11 years as a re­sult of the an­nu­al trade event."The con­ven­tion is a suc­cess sto­ry with a tra­di­tion of growth and re­al busi­ness suc­cess. We es­ti­mate that TIC has fa­cil­i­tat­ed over $0.5 bil­lion in trade over the past 11 years. That's just over US$450 mil­lion," he said.He was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's launch of the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF) at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.The CIF will take place from June 13-14 and is the first part of the T&T In­vest­ment Week 2011.

Par­tic­i­pants at the CIF will move di­rect­ly in­to the sec­ond part of the T&T In­vest­ment Week, which is the an­nu­al TIC show that takes place from June 15 to June 18 at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.This year is the 12th an­niver­sary of the TIC."This will gen­er­ate high lev­el busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty that is un­prece­dent­ed in this coun­try's his­to­ry. The TIC will see an in­crease in the num­ber of in­vestors and busi­ness­es here in search of new com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties. The ben­e­fits for this en­deav­our are many.

"It is the best ex­am­ple of a work­ing part­ner­ship be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. The suc­cess of part­ner­ship brings to­geth­er, Gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor and com­mer­cial spon­sors, like First Cit­i­zens bank, TSTT and the Gov­ern­ment through the Min­istry of Trade, and is one rea­sons why TIC grows every year from strength to strength," he said.Aboud said hun­dreds of in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers from 36 coun­tries will be at­tend­ing TIC 2011.

"Our job is to con­nect buy­ers and sell­ers and cre­ate new busi­ness part­ner­ships. We show­case a wide, high qual­i­ty, com­pet­i­tive­ly-priced range of goods and ser­vices from all sec­tors for the Caribbean. TIC now at­tracts hun­dreds of in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers. Among those coun­tries that are at­tend­ing are Brazil, Chi­na, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Puer­to Ri­co, Spain, Pana­ma, Unit­ed King­dom, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cana­da, Guyana, In­dia, Ja­maica, South Africa, the Unit­ed States, and many more," he said."The Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum and the cre­ation of a trade and in­vest­ment week takes how TIC op­er­ates to whole new lev­el. We want a bet­ter T&T and a more di­ver­si­fied T&T. We share the vi­sion of our prime min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment," Aboud said.