Nadaleen Singh

Even though ne­go­ti­a­tions for a re­newed Carib­Can agree­ment have not been com­plet­ed, Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath told man­u­fac­tur­ers yes­ter­day that there was need to of­fer im­proved qual­i­ty to ex­port mar­kets in­clud­ing Cana­da.Bharath said that it was im­por­tant for the Carib­Can ne­go­ti­a­tions to be fruit­ful so that lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers ex­port­ing to Cana­da can con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from low tax­es and oth­er in­cen­tives. The ex­ist­ing Carib­Can agree­ment ex­pired in De­cem­ber 2013.

"At the Min­istry, we have been lead­ing a very ag­gres­sive charge with re­gard to mak­ing T&T more in­vestor-friend­ly both for lo­cal in­vestors as well as for­eign di­rect in­vestors. A key com­po­nent of max­imis­ing that is the abil­i­ty to cre­ate qual­i­ty prod­ucts in T&T."

He was speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny to open the T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS) three-day work­shop which in­cludes a project to pro­mote the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­gion­al­ly har­monised in­fra­struc­ture. The T&T project ex­am­ines the poul­try in­dus­try. The cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Kapok ho­tel, Cot­ton Hill Road, Port-of-Spain.

Bharath an­tic­i­pat­ed that the re­newed agree­ment would be signed by the end of June which "will give us ac­cess to 30 mil­lion peo­ple but to be able to con­tin­ue to sup­ply those mar­kets with prod­uct and to be able to re­main com­pet­i­tive. we've got to un­der­stand that qual­i­ty is what we have to of­fer."

He added that qual­i­ty is a must when pro­duc­ing any prod­uct and this means that the TTBS needs to be a more proac­tive when it comes to dis­sem­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic. Bharath, who is a for­mer board mem­ber of the TTBS, said the en­ti­ty need­ed to be more "vis­i­ble" like the Con­sumer Af­fairs di­vi­sion which has be­come more proac­tive since the move from Le­gal Af­fairs Min­istry to the Trade Min­istry.