PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to im­prove its mar­itime sur­veil­lance and se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Ex­port-Im­port (Ex­Im) Bank of the Unit­ed States.

The agree­ment would see T&T gain ac­cess of up to US$500 mil­lion in tech­ni­cal sup­port for projects rang­ing from na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to re­new­able en­er­gy.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the ini­tial use of the funds would be fo­cused on mar­itime pa­trol ves­sels.

“We are look­ing at en­hanc­ing our ca­pa­bil­i­ty in our mar­itime do­main, with search and res­cue and pa­trolling. And that’s where the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive comes in. So the ini­tial thrust of the re­la­tion­ship is to fi­nance equip­ment and ser­vices and tech­ni­cal sup­port with re­spect to man­ag­ing and se­cur­ing our mar­itime bor­ders,” said Im­bert.

US Am­bas­sador to T&T, Can­dace Bond, said there has been some con­cern about the rise of il­le­gal traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in the South­ern Caribbean, and this played a role in the deal.

“Il­lic­it traf­fick­ing oc­cur­ring in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly the south-east­ern Caribbean, has in­creased by about 40 per cent over the past year and is in­creas­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly. So we re­al­ly lis­tened to the Gov­ern­ment and we re­al­ly lis­tened to the T&T De­fence Force. We went on tour through­out the coun­try to un­der­stand what the chal­lenges are and the poros­i­ty of the bor­ders. And so this was some­thing that we took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when we went to Wash­ing­ton DC and met with the Ex­Im chair to fig­ure out how we can re­al­ly help tack­le this. This is a huge is­sue that’s oc­cur­ring through­out the Caribbean, but par­tic­u­lar­ly for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Am­bas­sador Bond.

Chair of the US Ex­Im Bank, Re­ta Jo Lewis, said while typ­i­cal­ly the bank would not grant fund­ing for mil­i­tary equip­ment, T&T had prop­er­ly stat­ed a case for an in­vest­ment in such equip­ment.

“We have an ex­cep­tion where­by we can fi­nance projects that are go­ing to be used for dual use ...

“We un­der­stand that there is this pri­or­i­ty for the coun­try and that the goods and ser­vices that would be need­ed are the types of items that Ex­Im can fi­nance in this sec­tor,” said Jo Lewis.

The fa­cil­i­ty, Im­bert said, would al­so be used for re­new­able en­er­gy projects and a clause has been in­sert­ed so that terms for ad­di­tion­al us­es could be added.