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Monday, July 7, 2025

Finance Minister: T&T intensifying relations with China

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20110912

Chi­na is now a ma­jor glob­al play­er and it is im­por­tant for T&T to con­tin­ue to build re­la­tion­ships with them, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said yes­ter­day. "Chi­na has now emerged as a very sig­nif­i­cant play­er es­pe­cial­ly in light of the re­cent tremors and un­cer­tain­ty in the world econ­o­my. Chi­na is now be­ing viewed even by the large economies in the world as an econ­o­my they we will have to re­ly on. It is in that con­text that it is very ap­pro­pri­ate and time­ly that T&T start in­ten­si­fy­ing its re­la­tion­ship with Chi­na," Dook­er­an said.

He was speak­ing to the me­dia dur­ing a break in the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the third Chi­na-Caribbean Eco­nom­ic and Trade Co-op­er­a­tion Fo­rum yes­ter­day at the Hy­att-Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.

He point­ed out that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about three ar­eas for T&T and the rest of the Caribbean to de­vel­op a re­la­tion­ship with Chi­na. "One area has to do with the ques­tion of fi­nanc­ing of in­fra­struc­ture. The sec­ond area has to do with the ex­port of our prod­ucts to Chi­na and in par­tic­u­lar with re­spect to the grow­ing tourism in­dus­try and vis­i­tors from Chi­na which can be open mar­kets for us in the fu­ture," he said. He added that the third area has to do with tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer. "Third­ly it will deal with the pri­vate sec­tor and forg­ing new links for ex­plo­ration of their own prod­ucts and for the trans­fer of tech­nol­o­gy," he said. Re­ply­ing to ques­tions on how Chi­na can help Cari­com economies out of their present re­ces­sion, he said the help would come but it would not be now.

"I don't think it would be short term. I think it would be more in the medi­um term that you would be able to ac­cess the Chi­nese tourism mar­ket. But it is im­por­tant be­cause from what my in­for­ma­tion is that they are cur­rent­ly hav­ing 50 mil­lion vis­i­tors out of Chi­na per year and with­in five years that could in­crease to 100 mil­lion peo­ple be­cause the Chi­nese mid­dle class is now grow­ing and they are now en­ter­ing in the world tourism in­dus­try. So it's a new place we have to look to," he said. Talk­ing about pos­si­ble Chi­nese loans to the Caribbean, he said it would help in pover­ty re­duc­tion. Yes­ter­day, Chi­na's Vice Pre­mier, Wang Qis­han had promised loans of over US$1 bil­lion on pref­er­en­tial terms to Caribbean coun­tries.

"That pro­pos­al is for the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Fund to which T&T al­so con­tributes. So it will add to the cof­fers of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Fund, the pur­pose of which is to deal with is­sues of pover­ty and is­sues of so­cial safe­ty net and we wel­come the ad­di­tion to that," he said. Chen Dem­ing, Chi­na's Min­is­ter of Com­merce said Chi­na "at­tach­es great im­por­tance to trade with the Caribbean." "We want to work with Caribbean coun­tries to avoid any eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Two-way trade be­tween Chi­na and the Caribbean in 2010 amount­ed to over US$7 bil­lion. Chi­nese im­ports from the Caribbean have in­creased by over 17 per cent in re­cent years," he said.


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