Tout­ing him­self as the coun­try’s num­ber one sales­man, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his trips to Ghana and In­dia in the past two weeks were to ce­ment a shift in the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

Row­ley ad­dressed the me­dia at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s Con­fer­ence Room up­on his re­turn and said it was im­per­a­tive that the coun­try di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my away from oil and gas. He said his vis­its to Ghana and In­dia were aimed at do­ing just that.

He said Ghana is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to grow as the coun­try has a pop­u­la­tion of 34 mil­lion and a gate­way to an­oth­er 200 mil­lion po­ten­tial cus­tomers.

“There comes a time when you have to un­der­stand that there are lim­its with­in your own bor­der es­pe­cial­ly if you are and have been a trad­ing na­tion,” he said.

Row­ley said the need for the peo­ple of Ghana to be in­tro­duced to T&T is im­por­tant so that when busi­ness agree­ments are so­lid­i­fied there will be buy-in from the pop­u­la­tion of over 30 mil­lion.

He added that there is a con­tract to be signed that will im­pact busi­ness­es in both coun­tries. He said five to ten per cent of the busi­ness there is larg­er than Cari­com.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that Ghana Gas rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ex­pect­ed in the coun­try next month to strength­en ties with this coun­try. In March, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon led a del­e­ga­tion of busi­ness­men to Ghana. Ear­li­er in his me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said Re­pub­lic Bank was do­ing well in Ghana hav­ing opened more branch­es there than in this coun­try.  

Re­gard­ing his trip to In­dia, Row­ley said dis­cus­sions were had about this coun­try’s re­fin­ery.

How­ev­er, he is doubt­ful that the Jam­na­gar Re­fin­ery will be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing it. 

Jam­na­gar Re­fin­ery is owned by Re­liance In­dus­tries. Row­ley was in­vit­ed to In­dia by busi­ness mogul Mukesh Am­bani, the own­er of Re­liance In­dus­tries to deep­en dis­cus­sion for the Re­liance Group to con­struct a crick­et acad­e­my in Trinci­ty on lands once giv­en to Pan Trin­ba­go. 

Asked about any dis­cus­sion re­gard­ing the pur­chas­ing of the de­funct Petrotrin Re­fin­ery, Row­ley said it was men­tioned that T&T owned a re­fin­ery but giv­en the Jam­na­gar Re­fin­ery’s busi­ness mod­el, he was doubt­ful.  

“The key in­ter­est is not in the re­fin­ery, but they are in­vestors, so we don’t know if they see an op­por­tu­ni­ty and want to put in a pro­pos­al, but there are oth­ers who have done that,” he said.

Row­ley added that there are some pro­pos­als in hand to pur­chase the re­fin­ery which will have to be ad­dressed by the end of the month.