Paras Ra­moutar

Plans have been an­nounced for the es­tab­lish­ment of a per­ma­nent In­dia Trade Cen­tre in T&T short­ly, ac­cord­ing to Sunil Ag­ni­hotri, Joint Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­di­an Ex­port Or­gan­i­sa­tions (FIEO). Speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Mul­ti Prod­uct Trade Fair at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence on Fri­day morn­ing, he said this fa­cil­i­ty would help to pro­mote bi­lat­er­al trade. The In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Pro­mo­tions is co­or­di­nat­ing the fair which is joint­ly or­gan­ised by FIEO, the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion and the In­dia-Trinidad Cham­ber of Com­merce. The fair, which start­ed on May 21, ends to May 31. Some 34 of In­dia's top man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­porters have set up shop here. Items can be pur­chased ei­ther in bulk at whole­sale price or re­tail.

"FIEO is keen to set up an In­dia Trade Cen­tre in Trinidad to ser­vice the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of T&T; to help iden­ti­fy au­then­tic In­di­an sources of prod­ucts and ser­vices; to help pro­mote bi­lat­er­al trade," he said. Ag­ni­hotri said that FIEO rep­re­sents, di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly, the in­ter­ests of over 100,000 ex­porters and im­porters in In­dia. "In­dia shares very warm trad­ing ties with T&T. And, this is re­flect­ed in our trade sta­tis­tics when In­dia's ex­ports to this coun­try grew by a whop­ping 142 per cent dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2008-09. Ex­ports to T&T for the pe­ri­od 2007-08 val­ued around US $138 mil­lion. This went up to over US $329 mil­lion at present. Amongst, all the Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, in val­ue terms, T&T ranked sixth in In­dia's ex­ports," he said.

In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er, Shri Malay Mishra said the ex­hi­bi­tion will "show­case qual­i­ty prod­ucts with a dif­fer­ence." This year's pre­sen­ta­tion will serve as a mount­ing pad for an even greater show in 2011. Mishra said there were sev­er­al Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing on mat­ters of trade, busi­ness and dou­ble-tax­a­tion be­tween both coun­tries since 1997. Mishra urged FIEO to of­fer new prod­ucts for which In­di­an con­tin­ues to make a name for it­self, as items such as gar­ments and jew­els are al­ready well known here and oth­er sim­i­lar mar­kets. He said es­tab­lish­ment of the In­dia Trade Cen­tre would serve to en­hance joint ven­ture, trade and com­merce op­por­tu­ni­ties for both coun­tries, cit­ing some of In­dia's prod­ucts could be man­u­fac­tured here with the In­di­an la­bel and like­wise with T&T's prod­ucts.

Wayne Pun­nette, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, who rep­re­sent­ed Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Sen­a­tor Mar­i­ano Browne, saw the need for an even stronger trade and busi­ness re­la­tion­ship be­tween both coun­tries. T&T and In­dia should ex­plore fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties in trade and in­vest­ment, de­spite the chal­leng­ing times, he said.