An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

This coun­try is be­ing strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned as a cen­tral avi­a­tion hub link­ing the Caribbean, South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Africa, and even Asia.

This was the as­ser­tion made by Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia in­ter­view, as dis­cus­sions in­ten­si­fy around new air routes and trade op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Ma­haraj con­firmed that pre­lim­i­nary talks have be­gun with Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) re­gard­ing re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty, but em­pha­sised that CAL may not be the on­ly play­er in the ven­ture.

“We are ini­ti­at­ing dis­cus­sions with Caribbean Air­lines to start. They may not be the play­er; we don’t know. But we are talk­ing,” the min­is­ter stat­ed.

He added that T&T is nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed for the role of the con­nect­ing hub and that the gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing part­ner­ships to re­alise this vi­sion.

“We in­tend to make this the hub, and they are go­ing to be a vi­tal part of it. I’m hop­ing we can get an agree­ment from them and the gov­ern­ment to start that process,” he said.

“Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di just made that trip. So he showed you what was pos­si­ble,” he said, sug­gest­ing that qui­et lead­er­ship and ac­tion have be­gun to shift pub­lic per­cep­tion of what can be achieved.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, the move has sparked what he de­scribed as a “re­nais­sance in peo­ple’s think­ing” about T&T’s glob­al po­ten­tial.

Touch­ing on the im­por­tance of faster trav­el links, Ma­haraj point­ed out that ef­fec­tive trade and in­vest­ment with Africa would not be im­pos­si­ble if trips con­tin­ued to span mul­ti­ple days.

“There is no way we can do busi­ness in Africa, or Africa can do busi­ness with us, if it takes two days to get there and back. This is like a flight to Toron­to, just a lit­tle longer fly­ing across to Ghana,” he said.

Al­so, the min­is­ter an­nounced the gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled its in­tent to strength­en part­ner­ships with West African na­tions, an­nounc­ing its open­ness to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank) and oth­er African fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Ma­haraj said talks have al­ready tak­en place with the Min­istry of Fi­nance and oth­er key stake­hold­ers, and he re­mains con­fi­dent that the plan will move for­ward.

He stressed the im­por­tance of cul­tur­al fa­mil­iar­i­ty in forg­ing suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships.

The min­is­ter fur­ther dis­closed that some in­vest­ment projects are al­ready be­ing ear­marked for African fi­nanc­ing, even ahead of for­mal agree­ments.

For­mer Re­pub­lic Bank ex­ec­u­tive and pub­lic pol­i­cy ad­vis­er Robert Le Hunte told Guardian Me­dia that this is a step in the right di­rec­tion.

“That be­ing said, we need to stim­u­late oth­er fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms out­side of com­mer­cial banks, fi­nanc­ing, or in­vest­ment fi­nanc­ing to help small­er en­tre­pre­neurs par­tic­i­pate in the trade,” Le Hunte added.