By An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­port­ed TT$33.4 mil­lion in goods to Venezuela and im­port­ed TT$34.7 mil­lion in 2025, but the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to ex­pand trade as diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries re­sume af­ter a year of fall­out.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers and Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj out­lined op­por­tu­ni­ties for stronger com­mer­cial ties at a busi­ness round­table with a 16-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela’s Su­cre State at the Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day.

The vis­it is the first by a del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela since Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez met on the side­lines of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York in Sep­tem­ber, sig­nalling re­newed en­gage­ment be­tween the two coun­tries.

About 50 pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­nies from this coun­try reg­is­tered for the round­table, al­though few­er than 50 at­tend­ed. Par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent­ed agri­cul­ture, small busi­ness, trade, ship­ping, car­go and en­er­gy.

The event was co-host­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T and the Venezue­lan Em­bassy, with dis­cus­sions fo­cused on op­por­tu­ni­ties in fish­eries, agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism and en­er­gy.

The Su­cre del­e­ga­tion did not take ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, in­di­cat­ing that it had not re­ceived clear­ance from the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment to par­tic­i­pate in me­dia in­ter­views.

Su­cre is a state in east­ern Venezuela, sep­a­rat­ed from T&T by about sev­en miles at the clos­est point. Its prox­im­i­ty of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties for clos­er trade, trans­port and tourism links, while T&T has es­tab­lished en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ty that could sup­port co­op­er­a­tion with Venezuela’s sub­stan­tial hy­dro­car­bon re­sources.

Sobers de­scribed the round­table as the be­gin­ning of a wider process of en­gage­ment ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue over the com­ing months and po­ten­tial­ly the next few years. He linked the dis­cus­sions to the Sep­tem­ber meet­ing be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ro­dríguez, as well as his own vis­it to Cara­cas ear­li­er that month.

The Gov­ern­ment wants busi­ness­es in both coun­tries to be­come di­rect­ly in­volved in de­vel­op­ing com­mer­cial part­ner­ships, rather than al­low­ing diplo­mat­ic dis­cus­sions to re­main sep­a­rate from eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed the Cari­com-Venezuela Trade and In­vest­ment Agree­ment of 1992 as an im­por­tant frame­work for fa­cil­i­tat­ing trade and not­ed that tech­ni­cal teams from both coun­tries are re­view­ing the agree­ment to iden­ti­fy and pri­ori­tise prod­ucts for trade.

He added that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to host a we­bi­nar next month on do­ing busi­ness in Venezuela, fea­tur­ing the Venezue­lan am­bas­sador and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Gov­ern­ment.

Ma­haraj iden­ti­fied the pro­posed twin­ning of Güiria, in Su­cre State, and Port of Spain as a prac­ti­cal start­ing point. Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero has al­so ex­pressed in­ter­est in restor­ing the mar­itime trad­ing route be­tween the two lo­ca­tions.

Ma­haraj point­ed out that trade in non-en­er­gy goods be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela av­er­aged more than US$24 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly be­tween 2021 and June 2026. The fig­ures in­di­cate that com­mer­cial ex­change has con­tin­ued de­spite the strained diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship, but both gov­ern­ments be­lieve there is room to in­crease it.

Ma­haraj al­so point­ed to the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T, for­mal­ly es­tab­lished in De­cem­ber 2025, as a po­ten­tial chan­nel for Venezue­lan busi­ness­es to con­nect with lo­cal cham­bers, in­dus­try as­so­ci­a­tions and com­pa­nies across dif­fer­ent sec­tors.

He iden­ti­fied man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture, lo­gis­tics and tourism as ar­eas with scope for co­op­er­a­tion, adding that the pri­or­i­ty was to turn the dis­cus­sions in­to ac­tu­al busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

Restor­ing mar­itime trans­port re­mains a key pro­pos­al, but it is not yet a con­firmed ser­vice. The route be­tween Güiria and T&T has been in­ac­tive for about two to two-and-a-half years, and its re­vival would de­pend on car­go de­mand and com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

En­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion was al­so dis­cussed, in­clud­ing nat­ur­al gas de­vel­op­ment, cross-bor­der projects and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge ex­change. Sobers point­ed to a re­cent­ly signed let­ter of in­tent be­tween the en­er­gy cham­bers of T&T and Venezuela as a frame­work for clos­er in­dus­try en­gage­ment.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia for an up­date on Drag­on gas, Sobers in­di­cat­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal would com­ment in due course. He de­scribed the dis­cus­sions with the Su­cre del­e­ga­tion as pos­i­tive and con­firmed that talks were un­der way about vis­its in­volv­ing cen­tral-gov­ern­ment min­istries, al­though he gave no date.

Sánchez Cordero al­so had no date for cen­tral-gov­ern­ment talks, but ex­pressed op­ti­mism about strength­en­ing com­mer­cial links and in­di­cat­ed that the Su­cre del­e­ga­tion would re­turn to T&T.

In the eight-minute video on Surce State, it showed that tourism of­fers an­oth­er av­enue for co­op­er­a­tion, along with Trade and En­er­gy, al­so build­ing on shared cul­tur­al con­nec­tions such as parang and the Co­coa Pa­ny­ol her­itage, which re­flects Venezue­lan in­flu­ence on T&T’s co­coa in­dus­try. The dis­cus­sions al­so in­clud­ed pos­si­ble ed­u­ca­tion­al links.