Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day of­fi­cial­ly com­menced a trade mis­sion from this coun­try to Ja­maica by de­liv­er­ing re­marks at the “Do­ing Busi­ness in Ja­maica Sem­i­nar”.

In ad­dress­ing the au­di­ence, Gopee-Scoon said, “This trade mis­sion aims to pro­vide T&T’s ex­porters with net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, a chance to share mar­ket in­for­ma­tion, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with po­ten­tial buy­ers and agents.”

“Un­der the broad­er am­bit, this vis­it al­so re-en­forces the prin­ci­ples un­der­ly­ing the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas which pro­motes re­gion­al pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices, es­pe­cial­ly with a view of max­imis­ing for­eign ex­change earn­ings on the ba­sis of in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, at­tain­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, and im­prov­ing the stan­dard of liv­ing for our peo­ple,” a re­lease post­ed on the Trade Min­istry’s Face­book page stat­ed yes­ter­day.

Gopee-Scoon un­der­scored that Ja­maica and T&T are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing seam­less trade op­por­tu­ni­ties for our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and as such, en­tered in­to a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing on Au­gust 29 which seeks to re­solve trade com­plaints be­tween our coun­tries in a time­ly man­ner and to fa­cil­i­tate clos­er trade co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the coun­tries and for the res­o­lu­tion of trade is­sues.

Gopee-Scoon is cur­rent­ly lead­ing a del­e­ga­tion of busi­ness­men on a trade mis­sion to Ja­maica that is ex­pect­ed to end on Thurs­day.

The goal of the trade mis­sion is “to en­able bet­ter busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties and deep­en strate­gic busi­ness and lo­gis­ti­cal re­la­tion­ships be­tween man­u­fac­tur­ers and buy­ers.”

The mis­sion is a key project un­der the ex­port boost­er ini­tia­tive, which is a strate­gic ini­tia­tive of the Gov­ern­ment geared to­wards in­creas­ing the val­ue of all non-en­er­gy ex­ports over the next three years.

The re­lease not­ed Ja­maica is a sig­nif­i­cant trad­ing part­ner with T&T, rank­ing among its top 50 im­port sources and top 15 ex­port des­ti­na­tions for the last five years.

From 2017 to 2021 T&T main­tained a favourable trade bal­ance with Ja­maica with the main ex­ports be­ing aer­at­ed bev­er­ages (soft drinks), pre-cooked/pack­aged ce­re­als, choco­lates and cig­a­rettes, plas­tic in­su­lat­ed cop­per con­duc­tors, and sweet bis­cuits.

The main im­ports in­clude iron/ steel, soya bean oil, con­densed milk, and glass frag­ments, the re­lease added.

The mis­sion, or­gan­ised by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, ex­porTT, and the Na­tion­al Ex­port Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T com­pris­es 17 com­pa­nies from the chem­i­cals, print­ing and pack­ag­ing, food and bev­er­age, and con­struc­tion sec­tors in­clud­ing In­fi­nite Wood Work­ing, Bricha Ltd, Al­brosco Ltd, VF Pack­ag­ing Ltd, Caribbean Health Foods Ltd, Chem Clean Ltd, Mi­cro Milling Ltd, Nio Dig­i­tal, Ro­jan Mar­ket­ing Ltd and An­gos­tu­ra among oth­ers.