In­dia's High Com­mis­sion­er to Port-of-Spain, Malay Mishra, has said that the vis­it of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and a T&T del­e­ga­tion to his coun­try in Jan­u­ary has be­gun to bear fruit and he urged na­tion­als to look at the op­por­tu­ni­ties rather than con­cen­trate on the cost of the vis­it.

In a wide rang­ing in­ter­view at his of­fi­cer last week, the High Com­mis­sion­er said In­di­an busi­ness­es were view­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as the gate­way to the wider Caribbean and al­ready more than half a dozen of them have come to this coun­try seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­vest.

Mishra said: "We see T&T as a leader in the re­gion and while Cari­com is a rel­a­tive­ly small mar­ket, it is still a worth­while mar­ket in which you can set up your busi­ness and do well. In­di­an busi­ness­es are look­ing at T&T as a place to in­vest in." The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment has raised is­sues sur­round­ing the cost of the trip by the Prime Min­is­ter and her del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ing the cost of al­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's sis­ter to ac­com­pa­ny her on the trip.

Mishra said there is a need to lift the lev­el of the de­bate. "That kind of dis­cus­sion is ab­solute­ly ir­rel­e­vant. In my view it is a non is­sue. It's be­ing made an is­sue here and I think peo­ple are not ac­tu­al­ly dis­cussing the re­al thing. The re­al things are what the ben­e­fits of the vis­it are. Who paid for the vis­it, who has paid and who has not paid those are all ir­rel­e­vant is­sues.

"When­ev­er a gov­ern­ment un­der­takes a de­ci­sion to go on a state vis­it, there has to be ex­pens­es," the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er told the T&T Guardian. He added: "This vis­it has moved the lev­el of our re­la­tion­ship to a high pedestal. From our side, the im­por­tance of T&T in the eyes of the gov­ern­ment of In­dia has gone con­sid­er­ably high­er and we are look­ing at T&T, not on­ly as one coun­try in the Caribbean but al­so as a very sig­nif­i­cant lo­ca­tion and good hub for the rest of the re­gion for our busi­ness­es and our in­vestors to come down and in­vest."

He re­vealed that em­a­nat­ing from the trip, the In­di­an state com­pa­ny, Oil and Nat­ur­al Gas Cor­po­ra­tion (ONGC) has ex­pressed in­ter­est in the re­cent­ly opened deep-wa­ter bid round and has al­ready vis­it­ed the Min­istry of En­er­gy and ac­quired da­ta pack­ages with a view to de­cid­ing if it will bid for any of the blocks. In ad­di­tion, the for­eign arm of ONGC, OMEL which once had an of­fice here, is like­ly re­open it.

In ad­di­tion, Mishra said that the gov­ern­ments of T&T and In­dia have held dis­cus­sions on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an In­di­an firm buy­ing a stake in Petrotrin. He said: "There have been talks when both the min­is­ters met in In­dia in Jan­u­ary. There were talks about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of our Oil In­dia Ltd look­ing at be­ing an eq­ui­ty part­ner in Petrotrin. I do not know in view of the lat­est de­vel­op­ment what will hap­pen, but a del­e­ga­tion is go­ing to come soon in Ju­ly and we will wait and see what will hap­pen in the talks dur­ing the vis­it."

Mishra al­so told the Guardian that a del­e­ga­tion will be com­ing to T&T to fi­nalise a frame­work agree­ment be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and GAIL, the Gas Au­thor­i­ty of In­dia Lim­it­ed, which would see In­dia im­port­ing more LNG from T&T.

When asked how much gas was In­dia ex­pect­ing, bear­ing in mind the nat­ur­al gas chal­lenges fac­ing T&T, Mishra said: "In­dia is a large con­sumer of en­er­gy and it im­ports 70 per cent of that en­er­gy from var­i­ous coun­tries around the world. It is not re­al­ly ma­te­r­i­al how much quan­ti­ties we will get from T&T. Even if it is small, what­ev­er quan­ti­ties you get you will be ap­pre­cia­tive of it. And what­ev­er quan­ti­ties we get, it will go in­to our en­er­gy im­port bas­ket."

He al­so re­vealed that a fer­til­iz­er project was al­so in the works which would al­so in­volve some down­stream in­vest­ments. The In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er said the Min­is­ter of Pe­tro­le­um and Nat­ur­al Gas of In­dia has in­vit­ed Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Kevin Ram­nar­ine back to In­dia in Oc­to­ber to at­tend the Petrotech con­fer­ence where Ram­nar­ine is go­ing to be one of the fea­ture speak­ers and where he ex­pects fur­ther talks about how In­dia can deep­en its en­er­gy re­la­tion­ship with this coun­try.

With In­dia be­ing a leader in ICT, Mishra said his coun­try is pre­pared to as­sist T&T and al­ready an In­di­an led busi­ness is in­vest­ing US $50 mil­lion in set­ting up an ICT fa­cil­i­ty at the Tamana In­tec Park. He said: "They are putting in an In­ter­net switch and a da­ta volt, which is a huge da­ta bank, which they are mak­ing, and the In­ter­net switch which is be­ing de­vel­oped here and will be used in the en­tire re­gion.

"So that at the mo­ment your In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty is through Mi­a­mi and your da­ta is pass­ing through Mi­a­mi. You do not have to go through Mi­a­mi to get your da­ta here, your da­ta can well be un­der your con­trol and you can achieve your self suf­fi­cien­cy in da­ta man­age­ment and da­ta con­trol which this project will help in do­ing."