Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's in­vi­ta­tion to In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di to make an of­fi­cial vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go demon­strates a high lev­el of geopo­lit­i­cal think­ing and analy­sis.

The in­vi­ta­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di, who is due in Trinidad to­day, has been am­pli­fied by the T&T Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sion to have the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT) be­stowed on him by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to­mor­row.

There is a great deal of mer­it in both of these de­ci­sions be­cause they can on­ly re­dound to the ben­e­fit of this coun­try, while cost­ing the Gov­ern­ment lit­tle in the grand scheme of things.

The vis­it aims to strength­en the bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween T&T and In­dia in ar­eas in­clud­ing fi­nance, en­er­gy and in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, "lay­ing the ground­work for en­hanced strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween both na­tions," ac­cord­ing to a state­ment at­trib­uted to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in Port-of-Spain, but pub­lished in the In­di­an me­dia.

On the is­sue of en­er­gy, it would be sur­pris­ing if the dis­cus­sions be­tween the two prime min­is­ters do not turn to the thorny is­sue of the fu­ture of the oil re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre.

Last year, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at­tempt­ed to en­cour­age In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist Naveen Jin­dal to sub­mit a bid for the re­fin­ery, which has been lan­guish­ing in a moth­balled state for close to sev­en years.

The then op­po­si­tion, which now forms the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, led a cam­paign to dis­par­age Mr Jin­dal, who is a mem­ber of the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (BJP), which is led by Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di.

No one should be sur­prised if Mr Jin­dal turns up as part of the pri­vate sec­tor del­e­ga­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing Mr Mo­di.

One of the oth­er in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ments be­tween the two coun­tries in the last two years is the Cen­tral Bank of T&T's plan to adopt a fast pay­ments so­lu­tion based on In­dia's Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face sys­tem.

In a pa­per de­liv­ered last Oc­to­ber in Wash­ing­ton DC at the au­tumn meet­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire point­ed to the fact that the fast pay­ments so­lu­tion is part of a wider T&T/In­dia gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion, pos­si­bly in­clud­ing na­tion­al elec­tron­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion along the lines of In­dia’s AAD­HAAR.

It would be sur­pris­ing if this col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the gov­ern­ment of In­dia and T&T's Cen­tral Bank is not held up as one as­pect of the fu­ture of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries.

If Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di's vis­it to T&T re­sults in in­vest­ment by In­di­an busi­ness­men that leads to the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery, along with the roll-out of a fast pay­ment ser­vice by the Cen­tral Bank, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar's fore­sight and clear-eyed ap­pre­ci­a­tion of T&T's na­tion­al in­ter­ests will be uni­ver­sal­ly laud­ed, even by the cur­rent Op­po­si­tion.

The ORTT is award­ed to any per­son (cit­i­zen as well as non-cit­i­zen) who has ren­dered "dis­tin­guished and out­stand­ing ser­vice to Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Mr Mo­di will be the first po­lit­i­cal leader of a for­eign coun­try to re­ceive T&T's high­est award. It could be that the T&T Prime Min­is­ter, de­spite con­cerns raised against the vis­it by some Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tions, has de­cid­ed that this high ho­n­our should still be be­stowed on her In­di­an coun­ter­part in an­tic­i­pa­tion of "dis­tin­guished and out­stand­ing ser­vice" to T&T to come, rather than pre­vi­ous­ly de­liv­ered.