DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has re­ceived a grant of US$5 mil­lion (TT$35 mil­lion) from the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia. The agree­ment, de­scribed by of­fi­cials as a grant and not a loan, was for­malised yes­ter­day in the pres­ence of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers.

The an­nounce­ment was first shared by Per­sad-Bisses­sar while speak­ing at the Ca­roni Lease Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cer­e­mo­ny Part II, held at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Thurs­day. How­ev­er, she did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails about the na­ture or pur­pose of the fund­ing.

She ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tion from Sau­di Ara­bia’s Am­bas­sador Ab­dul­lah Al­sai­hani, not­ing his role in fos­ter­ing stronger ties be­tween both na­tions.

“As I’ve been telling every­one, Trinidad is open for busi­ness—Trinidad and To­ba­go. And many have heard this across the land, across the world, across the globe. He’s just one rep­re­sen­ta­tive but he brings so much to us and we want to thank him again,” she said.

Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein re­vealed that the Am­bas­sador, who is sta­tioned in Cara­cas, was in T&T to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia about the pur­pose of the meet­ing and whether it was linked to op­er­a­tions in the south­ern Caribbean, he said, "I have no in­for­ma­tion of such. Those are prob­a­bly ques­tions you can chan­nel bet­ter to the Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.”

Hours lat­er, pho­tos and a brief cap­tion were shared by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Face­book page.

Ac­cord­ing to the post, the grant aims to strength­en the long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween both coun­tries to­wards ex­pand­ing ar­eas of co­op­er­a­tion.