Raphael John-Lall

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, when you think about bul­let trains, tech­nol­o­gy and ad­vanced economies, you think about Japan and Ger­many. But now, In­dia’s do­ing all of that. I con­tex­tu­alised In­dia’s ad­vances and got some an­a­lysts to talk about the MOU’s and In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter’s vis­it last week. I no­ticed this morn­ing the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce al­so is­sued a me­dia re­lease on the vis­it so I took out a line and added to the sto­ry.

Raphael John-Lall

Last month, In­dia made in­ter­na­tion­al news head­lines when it sur­passed Japan to be­come the world’s fourth largest econ­o­my with its Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) reach­ing US$4.1 tril­lion.

In June, the Eco­nom­ic Times re­port­ed that near­ly 270 mil­lion peo­ple moved out of ex­treme pover­ty in In­dia be­tween 2012 and 2023, when those in ex­treme pover­ty shrank to 5.3 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion from 27.1 per cent, ac­cord­ing to lat­est da­ta re­leased by the World Bank.

In May, In­di­an me­dia re­port­ed that In­dia’s man­u­fac­tur­er of heavy equip­ment, the state-run BE­ML will be­gin con­struct­ing its first bul­let train pro­to­type at the com­pa­ny’s Ben­galu­ru fa­cil­i­ty by Sep­tem­ber 2025 as part of its high-speed rail mod­erni­sa­tion dri­ve.

In­dia is al­so known as the “phar­ma­cy of the world” for good rea­son. The coun­try sup­plies about 20 per cent of all gener­ic drugs.

Giv­en its strides, mod­ern In­dia has al­so in­flu­enced T&T.

T&T is about to be­come the first Caribbean na­tion is about to en­able trans­ac­tions through In­dia’s BHIM app us­ing the Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI), while In­di­an au­to brand, Mahin­dra ve­hi­cles have be­come well known on T&T’s roads. Many T&T na­tion­als al­so vis­it In­dia for health­care.

On the back­drop of mod­ern In­dia’s rise as an eco­nom­ic pow­er, In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di paid a state vis­it to T&T from Ju­ly 3 to 5 with the coun­tries sign­ing nu­mer­ous Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing (MoUs).

On Mon­day, T&T’s Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in a news re­lease, al­so praised Mo­di’s vis­it say­ing these agree­ments sig­nal a deep­en­ing of diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion be­tween both na­tions and have the po­ten­tial to cat­alyze mean­ing­ful trans­for­ma­tion across key sec­tors in­clud­ing health, agri­cul­ture, re­new­able en­er­gy, jus­tice, ed­u­ca­tion, trade, and pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In­dia aids T&T

Sev­er­al an­a­lysts spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about how Mo­di’s vis­it will ben­e­fit T&T.

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Busi­ness Guardian that In­dia, which is now well known for its tech­nol­o­gy, can as­sist T&T in this area.

“Yes, there are many ar­eas in which T&T can ben­e­fit from eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion with In­dia. T&T can look clos­er at the ad­vances in In­dia in tech­nol­o­gy. It may be eas­i­er to get this new tech­nol­o­gy from In­dia through train­ing, in­vest­ment and the use of ex­perts from In­dia. Ar­eas such as Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI), ro­bot­ics, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy are ar­eas for po­ten­tial co-op­er­a­tion.”

He al­so said that there is al­so scope to ex­pand trade with In­dia.

“As a fast-grow­ing econ­o­my, In­dia will be im­port­ing more, so some new op­por­tu­ni­ties for us should present them­selves. As a cost-com­pet­i­tive pro­duc­er, it should al­so be pos­si­ble to buy more goods and ser­vices cheap­er from In­dia. One can­not ig­nore al­so the role For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment (FDI) from In­dia can play in our strat­e­gy of ex­port di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. In the Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing, some of these ar­eas have al­ready been iden­ti­fied, and giv­en the his­to­ry and foun­da­tion of in­sti­tu­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion over the years, one would ex­pect that eco­nom­i­cal­ly T&T would ben­e­fit in the short to medi­um term.”

Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan told the Busi­ness Guardian that as the world’s fourth largest econ­o­my there are im­mense ben­e­fits from de­vel­op­ing a re­la­tion­ship with In­dia.

“A prime min­is­ter of the world’s 4th-largest econ­o­my does not en­ter in­to MOUs if he has no in­ten­tion of fol­low­ing through. So yes, I do be­lieve that the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to help­ing T&T. In­dia has al­ready had a very long and pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship with T&T. That said, MOUs are on­ly as good as the pa­per they are writ­ten on un­less the par­ties, and es­pe­cial­ly the de­pen­dent par­ty, are pre­pared to work the MOUs. That is to say con­vert what’s on pa­per in­to the in­tend­ed ben­e­fits through de­lib­er­ate ac­tions.”

She said sev­er­al MOUs were signed fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s vis­it cov­er­ing ar­eas such as re­new­able en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, health, and ed­u­ca­tion.

“There is re­new­able en­er­gy. Even as we ac­cel­er­ate oil and gas ex­plo­ration, re­new­able en­er­gy trans­for­ma­tion is an im­per­a­tive for T&T. In­dia leads in so­lar and bio­mass tech­nol­o­gy un­der its In­ter­na­tion­al So­lar Al­liance. We can ex­plore joint projects to in­stall util­i­ty-scale so­lar farms and pi­lot bio­mass-to-en­er­gy ini­tia­tives.”

She al­so spoke about agri­cul­ture and agro-pro­cess­ing.

“The UNC gov­ern­ment has al­ready sig­nalled the pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of agri­cul­ture and food pro­cess­ing. In­dia’s agro-tech­nol­o­gy, ir­ri­ga­tion, and food pro­cess­ing in­dus­tries are far ad­vanced and cost-ef­fec­tive. It pro­duced high-yield seed va­ri­eties through its Green Rev­o­lu­tion lega­cy and prac­tices, in­clud­ing mi­cro-ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems such as drip and sprin­kler ir­ri­ga­tion. Here lies the nec­es­sary sup­port T&T needs to mod­ernise its agri­cul­ture, in­tro­duce val­ue-added pro­cess­ing, and en­hance food se­cu­ri­ty to re­duce the food im­port bill.”

Sage­wan then high­light­ed phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and health­care as an­oth­er area T&T can ben­e­fit from.

“In­dia is among the largest glob­al pro­duc­ers of gener­ic med­i­cines and vac­cines. T&T suf­fers from se­ri­ous short­ages of key phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem and a ris­ing cost of med­i­cines. Part­ner­ing on this is there­fore a no-brain­er. More­over, giv­en T&T’s strate­gic lo­ca­tion vis-à-vis Latin Amer­i­ca, we should ex­plore col­lab­o­ra­tions for the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing of es­sen­tial drugs, there­by re­duc­ing health­care costs and build­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor ca­pac­i­ty.”

She added that In­dia at­tracts over half a mil­lion for­eign pa­tients an­nu­al­ly for treat­ments rang­ing from car­diac surgery and or­thopaedics to fer­til­i­ty and Ayurve­da-based well­ness ther­a­pies, of­fer­ing world-class care at a frac­tion of West­ern costs. T&T can ben­e­fit by part­ner­ing with In­di­an hos­pi­tals and med­ical in­sti­tutes to train lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als, es­tab­lish telemed­i­cine col­lab­o­ra­tions, and de­vel­op niche med­ical tourism of­fer­ings in the Caribbean, she said.

In the field of ICT and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, she said In­dia is a glob­al leader in IT ser­vices, boast­ing ad­vanced e-gov­er­nance plat­forms.

“T&T would be well ad­vised to seek tech­ni­cal sup­port to digi­tise pub­lic ser­vices, es­tab­lish cod­ing acad­e­mies, and de­vel­op the do­mes­tic ICT in­dus­try to cre­ate high-val­ue jobs. We are al­ready in the process of adopt­ing its UPI on­line pay­ment sys­tem, which has tru­ly trans­formed mi­cro com­merce in In­dia.”

Agree­ments signed

Last week, T&T and In­dia signed 15 new agree­ments span­ning health, ed­u­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture, dig­i­tal ser­vices, trade, and cul­ture.

One of the stand­out agree­ments is the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing on Quick Im­pact Projects (QIPs).

“Through this MOU, the gov­ern­ment of In­dia will pro­vide grant fund­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of short-ges­ta­tion QIPs which will not ex­ceed US$50,000 for each project. A max­i­mum of five projects will be of­fered in each fi­nan­cial year,” a joint state­ment con­firmed.

Some of the high­lights in­clude:

• Fif­teen bi­lat­er­al agree­ments signed across health, ed­u­ca­tion, trade, ICT, cul­ture, and jus­tice;

•Some 2,000 lap­tops do­nat­ed to sup­port Form One stu­dents;

• Twen­ty dial­y­sis ma­chines, two sea am­bu­lances, and pros­thet­ic limb camp for 800 peo­ple;

• US$1 mil­lion in agro-ma­chin­ery hand­ed over to Namde­v­co;

• QIP agree­ment: up to five projects an­nu­al­ly at US$50,000 each;

• T&T to adopt In­dia’s UPI, ex­plore Dig­iLock­er, e-Sign, GeM;

• In­di­an sup­port pledged for foren­sic sci­ence cen­tre and le­gal train­ing;

• Steel­pan artistes to tour In­dia un­der new cul­tur­al ex­change pro­gramme;

• T&T joins Glob­al Bio­fu­el Al­liance and Dis­as­ter Re­silient In­fra­struc­ture Coali­tion;

• In­dia to pro­vide so­lar PV sys­tem for Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs;

• OCI cards ex­tend­ed to sixth-gen­er­a­tion T&T cit­i­zens of In­di­an de­scent; and

• Mu­tu­al sup­port for UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil can­di­da­cies