For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne be­lieves Trinidad and To­ba­go has lost op­por­tu­ni­ties to strength­en trade with Venezuela and must now fo­cus on for­mal­is­ing com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween the two coun­tries.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter a post-bud­get pan­el dis­cus­sion host­ed by St Mary’s Col­lege Busi­ness De­part­ment and its Past Stu­dents’ Union, Browne point­ed to Venezuela’s pop­u­la­tion of about 30 mil­lion and its his­tor­i­cal role in sup­ply­ing food to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Venezuela is a mar­ket with 30 mil­lion peo­ple, and most peo­ple do not know that a lot of our food, not the turn of this cen­tu­ry, but in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, was sup­plied out of Venezuela,” he ex­plained.

Browne ar­gued that the two coun­tries had main­tained trad­ing ties over gen­er­a­tions, but much of the cur­rent ex­change takes place out­side the for­mal cus­toms sys­tem.

“Much of it now is un­cus­tomed, mean­ing it doesn’t pass through the nor­mal ports. And that’s what we have to change,” he added.

His com­ments come as ques­tions per­sist about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion abroad, in­clud­ing the ab­sence of am­bas­sadors in Cara­cas Venezuela, Wash­ing­ton DC, and Chi­na.

Over the week­end, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers, who ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on Oc­to­ber 24, ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of fill­ing the va­cant post­ings.

“If you would al­low me to re­call my orig­i­nal an­swer to your ques­tion, all of these post­ings and con­sul gen­er­al post­ings are of ex­treme im­por­tance to this ad­min­is­tra­tion, and yes, it may very well as­sist the ad­min­is­tra­tion in hav­ing per­sons at posts. But since en­ter­ing of­fice in 2025, I have been giv­en the man­date to per­son­al­ly (man­age the re­la­tion­ships) and I’ve been do­ing so, I would want to say, quite well,” Sobers ex­plained.

Browne al­so point­ed to the diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, ob­serv­ing that the South Amer­i­can coun­try had main­tained an am­bas­sador in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while this coun­try had been with­out an am­bas­sador in Venezuela dur­ing a crit­i­cal pe­ri­od.

“So we’ve lost an op­por­tu­ni­ty. So Venezuela is com­ing to en­gage. The point is what do we want to en­gage on?” Browne asked.

He be­lieves there is con­sid­er­able scope for com­mer­cial en­gage­ment, but Trinidad and To­ba­go must be pre­pared to iden­ti­fy and pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Venezue­lan mar­ket.

On the re­cent in­crease in park­ing fees at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Browne de­scribed the move as part of a wider pat­tern of gov­ern­ment fee in­creas­es, while ques­tion­ing the broad­er ap­proach to charges.

“The gov­ern­ment has been nic­k­el­ing and dim­ing with fees, right, all across the board,” he re­marked.

Browne al­so re­ferred to the in­crease in the non-de­c­la­ra­tion fee from $125,000 to $250,000, ques­tion­ing how of­ten peo­ple had been chal­lenged, jailed or fined un­der the mea­sure.

He ac­knowl­edged that he had not cal­cu­lat­ed the full im­pact of the air­port park­ing fee in­crease, but point­ed to the lim­it­ed com­pe­ti­tion air­ports face in pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices.

“Air­ports tend to be mo­nop­o­lies, and they tend to make mon­ey from in­creas­ing their prices on sim­ple ser­vices, right? Be­cause you need it, you’re there,” he ex­plained.

While the in­crease was not sur­pris­ing to him, Browne con­sid­ered it a rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor is­sue with­in the wider eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing T&T and the struc­tur­al changes the coun­try needs to make.