Trinidad and To­ba­go and Pana­ma are seek­ing to strength­en links in en­er­gy, trans­port and mar­itime ser­vices. The an­nounce­ment was made af­ter high-lev­el dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pana­man­ian Pres­i­dent, Ri­car­do Mar­tinel­li, on Mon­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

Mar­tinel­li vis­it­ed Trinidad as a fea­ture speak­er at the 2012 Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF) at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, St Ann's. A state­ment yes­ter­day from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said fol­low­ing the ple­nary ses­sion of the CIF in which the Prime Min­is­ter and the Pres­i­dent par­tic­i­pat­ed, the two lead­ers met to dis­cuss is­sues which would see both coun­tries strength­en­ing links in sev­er­al ar­eas.

For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter, Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine and Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj were present for the dis­cus­sions.

Al­so present were chair­man of State-owned Petrotrin Lind­say Gillette, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Lake As­phalt De­onar­ine Sarab­jit and chair­man of Caribbean Air­lines Ra­bindra Moo­nan.

The state­ment said the Prime Min­is­ter pro­posed the sup­ply of avi­a­tion fu­el to Pana­ma af­ter Mar­tinel­li's dis­clo­sure Pana­ma had been in the process of ex­pand­ing its air­port to ac­com­mo­date an ad­di­tion­al 66 gates. On com­ple­tion, the Pana­ma City air­port will be among the largest in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Mar­tinel­li told the meet­ing Pana­ma had signed an agree­ment with a Venezue­lan com­pa­ny which planned to con­struct an un­der­wa­ter pipeline. On this ba­sis, Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a joint ven­ture which al­lowed T&T to sup­ply fu­el to Pana­ma, via that pipeline.

As­phalt was al­so high on the agen­da as Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ex­port­ing re­fined as­phalt to Pana­ma. An­oth­er mat­ter dis­cussed was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of T&T set­ting up a diplo­mat­ic mis­sion in Pana­ma. The state­ment said the two lead­ers "al­so shared their de­sire for stronger diplo­mat­ic ties be­tween both coun­tries. It said Mar­tinel­li en­cour­aged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to es­tab­lish an em­bassy in Pana­ma.