Adri­an Boodan

The sec­ond trade and in­vest­ment mis­sion from Asia to Trinidad and To­ba­go has been a suc­cess, says Pun­dit Manideo Per­sad, T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to New Del­hi, In­dia. Per­sad was speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian af­ter a farewell din­ner for the del­e­ga­tion in the Shri Raam Dhaam func­tion hall at SWA­HA Hin­du Tem­ple, St Lu­cien Road, Diego Mar­tin, last week­end.

Per­sad said 48 del­e­gates from In­dia, Bangladesh and Sri Lan­ka took part in the event, which be­gan in Port-of-Spain on June 22. Per­sad said he had re­ceived word that the $24 mil­lion Bol­ly­wood movie, Dul­ha Mil Gaya, which was filmed in T&T, was card­ed for in­ter­na­tion­al re­lease on Sep­tem­ber 18. He said Shah Rukh Khan and Sush­mi­ta Sen act­ed in the movie.

On the trade side, Per­sad said the Fed­er­a­tion of In­di­an Ex­porters had con­firmed in­ter­est in es­tab­lish­ing an In­di­an-T&T trade cen­tre lo­cal­ly. Per­sad said this would be a one-stop shop for In­di­an goods and ser­vices. He al­so said the Asians were con­sid­er­ing se­ri­ous­ly sug­ges­tions put for­ward by Ch­agua­nas May­or Su­ruj Ram­bachan, that a mall should be set up in Cen­tral, where In­di­an com­pa­nies could pro­mote their goods.

On the ed­u­ca­tion front, Per­sad said Cariri was set to sign a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Shri Raam Re­search In­sti­tute, in In­dia, for the ex­change of tech­nol­o­gy and ex­per­tise. Per­sad said the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T al­so was look­ing at de­vel­op­ing en­er­gy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts for the In­di­an mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad, he had al­so held dis­cus­sions with Dr Clement Sankat, pro vice chan­cel­lor of UWI, for the train­ing of In­di­an stu­dents at UWI. The High Com­mis­sion­er said he had pro­posed to To­bag­o­ni­ans to have a spe­cif­ic mis­sion to Asia to pro­mote tourism and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties at Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. Carl Fran­cis, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, said it was like­ly a trade mis­sion from T&T would head to Asia soon.