Pana­ma’s Am­bas­sador to T&T Selvia Edith Miller Palmer says busi­ness re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries con­tin­ue to be strong as she seeks to fos­ter even greater ties with T&T in dif­fer­ent ar­eas.

Palmer, who as­sumed of­fice about three years ago, said she ar­rived “in the midst of COVID,” but de­spite set­backs brought on by the pan­dem­ic ef­forts con­tin­ue to fos­ter greater ties, not­ing that tourism and cul­ture are among these sec­tors.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, the Am­bas­sador not­ed that trade for in­stance, re­mains flour­ish­ing as she ref­er­enced that en­ti­ties like the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) con­tin­ue to build its link­ages with Pana­ma as lo­cal busi­ness­es fre­quent­ly vis­it the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try.

“When you talk about trad­ing busi­ness­es, a lot of com­pa­nies and stores in T&T buy their goods in the free zone in Pana­ma, specif­i­cal­ly the trade zone in Colon in Pana­ma be­cause there you buy in bulk,” Palmer, a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site of T&T’s Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, T&T and Pana­ma have en­joyed cor­dial re­la­tions since the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in May 1994. Both coun­tries con­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions for a Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment (PS­TA) which was signed in Oc­to­ber 2013 and as­sent­ed to by the Pres­i­dent in April 2015. This Agree­ment was in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s law by way of Act No. 5 of 2015 and is cur­rent­ly be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

The PS­TA is aimed at im­prov­ing bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween the coun­tries.

The agree­ment is in­tend­ed to pro­vide ac­cess in­to Pana­ma for 230 prod­ucts from this coun­try, while of­fer­ing re­duced tar­iffs on 248 prod­ucts from Pana­ma.

Some of the prod­ucts which were grant­ed ac­cess to the Pana­ma mar­ket in­clude chew­ing gum, peanut but­ter, doors and win­dows, build­ing blocks, bi­tu­men, aer­at­ed wa­ter, pa­per prod­ucts, tiles and blocks, met­al prod­ucts, plas­tic and pa­per con­tain­ers, oth­er pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als, agro-processed goods such as co­coa, ce­re­als and nuts.

The PS­TA al­so pro­vides for fu­ture ne­go­ti­a­tion of a Bi­lat­er­al In­vest­ment Treaty (BIT); ser­vices lib­er­al­i­sa­tion; and ad­di­tion­al ac­cess for prod­ucts three years af­ter its en­try in­to force.

T&T ex­ports to Pana­ma to­taled US$106.91 mil­lion dur­ing 2021, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

In the area of tourism, Palmer said T&T has great po­ten­tial, apart from its sig­na­ture event Car­ni­val, and she be­lieves that such of­fer­ings can be mar­ket­ed on a larg­er scale.

“Trinidad has more things to of­fer than Car­ni­val, so when I take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate the Pana­ma Na­tion­al Day, I in­vite some of my coun­try peo­ple to come vis­it Trinidad and we usu­al­ly have them take some tours around Trinidad. They even went to To­ba­go last year to see the next part of Trinidad that is not Car­ni­val,” Palmer ex­plained as she added that even in her own jour­neys through­out this coun­try she al­ways feels “at home” due to T&T’s rich cul­ture, sim­i­lar to that of her home­land.

“This is my first time as an am­bas­sador and be­ing in T&T makes me feel at home. I am a Pana­man­ian but I have a very Caribbean in­flu­ence and her­itage. The province where I come from is Colon which has a very high Caribbean in­flu­ence be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple in Colon are de­scen­dants of the peo­ple from Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, the is­land of San An­dres and these are the ones who came to work on the Pana­ma canal. We are grand­chil­dren and great grand­chil­dren of these peo­ple so we have a very strong Caribbean in­flu­ence,” Palmer shared.

In that vein, she is work­ing on cul­tur­al ex­change and tourism agree­ments to pro­mote what Pana­ma can share with T&T and vice ver­sa.

“Pana­ma works very well in the or­ange in­dus­try (cul­tur­al and cre­ative econ­o­my) which is tourism cen­tred and in this we have many things to of­fer for Trinida­di­ans to see in Pana­ma. I am al­so work­ing for Pana­ma­ni­ans to come to Trinidad. These are not just for sites and at­trac­tions but al­so for the many cul­tur­al things Trinidad has,” Palmer said.

She al­so not­ed that like Pana­ma, T&T has Span­ish in­fu­sion in its mu­sic such as Parang and even so­ca.

“In Pana­ma, we have one steel­pan man who mar­ried a Pana­man­ian and for every West In­di­an event we in­vite him and for us it is very im­por­tant for us to have a clos­er idea of what is the cul­ture of the steel­pan and so­ca be­cause it is part of our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty.

“The dif­fer­ence is be­ing in a Latin Amer­i­can coun­try, we can make the switch as we speak both Eng­lish and Span­ish. We have so­ca in Eng­lish and we have so­ca in Span­ish, Pana­man­ian style. It is im­por­tant to get clos­er to the tra­di­tions.

“For in­stance, I learnt that in To­ba­go, there is a cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion which is called Con­go Belle. In Pana­ma, we have the Cul­ture of the Con­gos and it has a sim­i­lar­i­ty with the drums, the dance, the cloth­ing and the ex­pres­sions,” Palmer stat­ed.

Both coun­tries al­so share sim­i­lar­i­ties when it comes to culi­nary de­lights which Palmer is hop­ing to show­case to her fel­low coun­try­men on her quest for greater pro­mo­tion.

She is al­so work­ing on hav­ing more flights to and from Trinidad and Pana­ma via Co­pa Air­lines, which can sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

“We have a slo­gan which says Pana­ma is La Con­nec­tion be­cause we are a hub. It is eas­i­er to get to oth­er places from Pana­ma. We are in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and we are con­sid­ered the hub of the Amer­i­c­as,” Palmer added.

In the field of ed­u­ca­tion, there are plans to es­tab­lish stu­dent ex­change pro­grammes to as­sist lo­cals with their Span­ish-speak­ing skills while Pana­ma­ni­ans can come to T&T to re­in­force their Eng­lish.

In ad­di­tion to her work as a teacher in sec­ondary and high­er ed­u­ca­tion, Palmer has been a fea­tured speak­er and lec­tur­er on a va­ri­ety of top­ics re­lat­ed to Afro cul­ture, the em­pow­er­ment of Afro-Pana­man­ian women, the his­to­ry of the Con­go, and more.

She has shared her ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge in var­i­ous cities in Pana­ma, as well as in in­ter­na­tion­al lo­ca­tions such as Cali, Colom­bia, San An­dres Is­land, San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca and New York.

Her ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and com­mit­ment to cul­tur­al pro­mo­tion, the de­fence of the rights of the Afro-de­scen­dant com­mu­ni­ty in Pana­ma and teach­ing led her to be ap­point­ed Am­bas­sador of Pana­ma to T&T.

Pana­ma Canal

Last week, there were me­dia re­ports which not­ed that a drought has left the Pana­ma Canal with­out enough wa­ter, forc­ing of­fi­cials to slash the num­ber of ves­sels they al­low through

The Canal has pro­vid­ed a con­ve­nient way for ships to move be­tween the Pa­cif­ic and At­lantic Oceans, help­ing to speed up in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

The re­duc­tion in sail­ings through the Pana­ma Canal has cre­at­ed ex­pen­sive headaches for ship­ping com­pa­nies and raised dif­fi­cult ques­tions about wa­ter use in Pana­ma.

The Pana­ma Canal, con­nect­ing the At­lantic with Pa­cif­ic Ocean,

Palmer sought to clar­i­fy con­cerns that the canal–an 80-kilo­me­tre-long, man-made wa­ter­way–was dry­ing up.

“A lot of peo­ple were ask­ing me whether the Pana­ma Canal’s wa­ter fin­ish­ing and they are not go­ing to be able tran­sit goods through the Pana­ma Canal any more.

“The sit­u­a­tion that has been go­ing on in the Canal is some­thing that hap­pens every year dur­ing the dry sea­son, but due to the cli­mate change and due to the sit­u­a­tion with the weath­er now, it has been in­creased,” the Am­bas­sador said.

She al­so not­ed that dur­ing this time, tran­sit of the canal is very slow as book­ings from ships come in a bit late.

“That lev­el of the wa­ter hon­est­ly, is a bit low, but this does not stop the ships from go­ing from one side to the oth­er. When they built the Canal they built al­so two ar­ti­fi­cial lakes; one in the Pa­cif­ic and one in the At­lantic.When the dry sea­son comes these ar­ti­fi­cial lakes pro­vide enough wa­ter for the ships to tran­sit,” Palmer said, adding these the lakes are filled with wa­ter year-round.

Palmer al­so made it clear about her love for Tri­ni food, her favourites be­ing bake and shark and pholourie.