Nine­ly nine months af­ter his ap­point­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go's Am­bas­sador to Brazil, Hamza Rafeeq, pre­sent­ed his cre­den­tials to Brazil­ian pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff on Fri­day last at the Pal&aa­cute;cio do Ita­ma­raty. Eigh­teen oth­er Am­bas­sadors al­so pre­sent­ed their Let­ters of Cre­dence on that day, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Am­bas­sador Rafeeq was ap­point­ed as Am­bas­sador to Brazil and Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary to Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Ar­genti­na in No­vem­ber 2010.

He ar­rived in Brazil in De­cem­ber 2010 and pre­sent­ed copies of his Let­ters of Cre­dence to Brazil´s Chief of Pro­to­col which al­lowed him to func­tion as Am­bas­sador. Since his ar­rival in Brazil, Am­bas­sador Rafeeq has been mak­ing ef­forts to strength­en the Trade and In­vest­ment re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries. So far he has been suc­cess­ful in ac­quir­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance for Trinidad and To­ba­go in sev­er­al ar­eas in the field of Agri­cul­ture. The im­por­ta­tion of cheap­er beef from Brazil is al­so be­ing ex­plored as well as ply­wood and oth­er wood prod­ucts.

Am­bas­sador Rafeeq was in­stru­men­tal in se­cur­ing meet­ings be­tween rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Trinidad and To­ba­go's en­er­gy sec­tor and Brazil's state owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny Petro­bras. A meet­ing be­tween of­fi­cials of the State of Par&aa­cute; in the North of Brazil and Lake As­phalt Trinidad Lim­it­ed was re­cent­ly held.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing and it is ex­pect­ed that Trinidad Lake As­phalt will be­gin do­ing busi­ness with the State of Par&aa­cute; in the not too dis­tant fu­ture. Am­bas­sador Rafeeq has al­ready ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al oth­er projects in­clud­ing the ex­port of Ce­ment to Brazil and is cur­rent­ly hold­ing dis­cus­sions with re­spect to steel and cos­met­ics.