GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing in­to a crit­i­cal phase of its glob­al eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy, as a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion from the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) ar­rives in this coun­try to­mor­row.

The mis­sion, led by Noura bint Mo­hammed Al Kaabi, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, comes just about six weeks af­ter a T&T min­is­te­r­i­al team vis­it­ed Abu Dhabi which sig­nalled a high lev­el of in­ter­est from the Gulf na­tion. It is now look­ing to move be­yond its tra­di­tion­al in­vest­ment mar­kets in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope to ex­plore the po­ten­tial of the South­ern Caribbean.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia fol­low­ing Am­cham T&T’s 2026 Eco­nom­ic Out­look fo­rum which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John shared fur­ther de­tails about the vis­it.

She not­ed that while the UAE has ex­pressed strong in­ter­est in T&T’s “Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print,” this trip is about pro­vid­ing the Emi­rati lead­er­ship with the on-the-ground as­sur­ance they re­quire.

“She’s go­ing to vis­it some of our projects both in, not on­ly Trinidad, Trinidad and To­ba­go. And then, of course, that is a kind of val­i­da­tion vis­it, ba­si­cal­ly, to just have a bet­ter look at the project, so she can re­turn to her coun­try and tell her peo­ple, as­sure them that all is well. Be­cause re­mem­ber, places like Abu Dhabi, they in­vest in North Amer­i­ca, and Eu­rope, and these are the known mar­kets for them. So un­der­stand­ably, they have to get to un­der­stand Trinidad and To­ba­go a lit­tle bet­ter. I mean, we know it, and we love it, but oth­er peo­ple, it’s not so well known, un­for­tu­nate­ly,” John ex­plained.

Dur­ing the vis­it, the del­e­ga­tion will have ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter; the Min­is­ters of Works and In­fra­struc­ture; Land and Le­gal Af­fairs; Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence; and Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment.

John said the del­e­ga­tion would al­so vis­it sev­er­al sites in north, south and cen­tral Trinidad iden­ti­fied in the Gov­ern­ment’s re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion blue­print for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments in­clud­ing In­vaders Bay, the port of Point Lisas; Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal etc.

On Sun­day Jan­u­ary 25, 2026, the del­e­ga­tion vis­its To­ba­go as guests of the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. Sev­er­al sites there have been iden­ti­fied for in­vest­ments be­fore de­part­ing next Mon­day morn­ing.

The In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Dubai and the Abu Dhabi In­vest­ment Au­thor­i­ty, the in­vest­ment arms of their re­spec­tive Emi­rates, are cu­mu­la­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble for US$1.5 tril­lion in as­sets and there­fore T&T must con­tin­ue to en­gage and con­tin­ue to build its re­la­tion­ships with the UAE and the wider Gulf re­gion, John stat­ed.

She al­so spoke about the In­vad­er’s Bay project stat­ing there has been an ex­ten­sion for the Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est (EOI).

Orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to close this to­day, the dead­line has now been pushed to Feb­ru­ary 2026.

“The Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est was sup­posed to be closed on Thurs­day, to­mor­row...It’s go­ing to be ex­tend­ed for the next two weeks, be­cause they have had so many re­quests for an ex­ten­sion. We were re­al­ly go­ing to be very stiff-necked about it, be­cause we have some rigid time­lines go­ing for­ward. So we have now ex­tend­ed to the 5th of Feb­ru­ary, but af­ter that, all of the oth­er time­lines re­main fixed,” John added.

Am­cham T&T pres­i­dent urges strate­gic piv­ot

High­light­ing a piv­otal mo­ment for the na­tion­al econ­o­my, An­na Hen­der­son, AM­CHAM TT pres­i­dent opened the fo­rum yes­ter­day with a call to trans­form glob­al “cross­winds” in­to lo­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Ad­dress­ing a room of busi­ness lead­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and stake­hold­ers, Hen­der­son ac­knowl­edged the sober­ing da­ta while main­tain­ing a stance of “strate­gic op­ti­mism.”

With re­al GDP growth for 2025 es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly one per cent and pub­lic debt hov­er­ing near 70 per cent of GDP, Hen­der­son not­ed that while the na­tion is not in a state of cri­sis, the fig­ures sig­nal a need for ur­gency.

The theme of this year’s fo­rum, “Cross­winds to Op­por­tu­ni­ties,” re­flects an in­ten­tion­al shift away from the sta­tus quo. Hen­der­son em­pha­sised that the glob­al land­scape is be­ing rad­i­cal­ly re­ordered by the Fourth In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion.

“Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, au­toma­tion, and da­ta-dri­ven sys­tems are no longer emerg­ing—they are here,” Hen­der­son stat­ed. She ar­gued that T&T must lever­age these tech­nolo­gies to mod­ernise pub­lic ser­vices and raise pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to re­main glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive.

Hen­der­son out­lined a fu­ture where T&T serves as a pre­mier south­ern Caribbean hub. She iden­ti­fied crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties in the mar­itime and ship-re­pair in­dus­tries, lo­gis­tics, trans­ship­ment, and ad­vanced dig­i­tal ser­vices.

By lever­ag­ing its po­si­tion out­side the hur­ri­cane belt and its prox­im­i­ty to South Amer­i­can mar­kets, she ar­gued that the coun­try pos­sess­es struc­tur­al ad­van­tages that are com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties.