Guyana's pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley have said that plans to ad­vance trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries are go­ing well.

"You will be shocked to see the lev­el of work and plan­ning that have al­ready tak­en place," Ali said at a joint news con­fer­ence be­tween the two lead­ers at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's on Thurs­day.

"I think the word you're look­ing for is sig­nif­i­cant," Dr Row­ley added.

"We can sig­nif­i­cant­ly, pos­i­tive­ly im­pact not just our sup­ply but our af­ford­abil­i­ty and our costs," he added.

Both lead­ers signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) in George­town, Guyana in May this year, aim­ing to pro­vide for re­newed and en­hanced co­op­er­a­tion in the ar­eas of trade and in­vest­ment.

It is al­so ex­pect­ed to ad­dress non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and oth­er im­ped­i­ments to the flow of goods and ser­vices while pur­su­ing en­hanced co­op­er­a­tion in agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty, se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy, in­fra­struc­ture, tourism, ed­u­ca­tion, sport and cul­ture.

Guyana's busi­ness­men had raised con­cerns back then about non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers to trade with T&T, which Dr Row­ley and Ali had vowed to work to­geth­er on with a view to re­solv­ing them.

Speak­ing at the news con­fer­ence Thurs­day, Ali ref­er­enced a phrase used by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­ley - a coali­tion of the will­ing - say­ing that the choice was to wait un­til every­one (in Cari­com) is ready or to progress in par­tic­u­lar ar­eas.

He said Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana have ac­cept­ed the need to move for­ward in some ar­eas and have de­vel­oped a mech­a­nism "that we ad­vance in those ar­eas".

Pres­i­dent Ali said a task force es­tab­lished to give ef­fect to the MoU has al­ready iden­ti­fied the is­sues that need to be re­solved and has start­ed work­ing on them.

He said they have al­ready com­plet­ed a list of non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and have seen a lot of po­ten­tial lay­ing ahead.

"We are now singing loud­ly that we recog­nise there is a sys­temic prob­lem and we have to solve them and we are com­mit­ting our­selves to solve it through the task force," Ali said.

"We are de­ter­min­ing what are the paths and the steps to take for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go," he added.

Dr Row­ley agreed that the task force had been pro­gress­ing plans and that tar­gets dead­lines were on track to be met, while al­so point­ing to work that needs to be done for the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) to work.

He said for a func­tion­ing CSME, goods, peo­ple and fi­nances should be able to trans­mit any part of the mar­ket unim­ped­ed.

"If a com­pa­ny is reg­is­tered in Port-of-Spain, that should be no­ticed in Guyana. How do we do that? Maybe one re­gion­al reg­istry. In a per­fect­ly work­ing sin­gle mar­ket that reg­is­tra­tion should be able to be im­pact­ful across the re­gion," he not­ed.

Dr Row­ley al­so men­tioned that Guyana will give T&T 5,000 co­conut plants to help re­store the in­dus­try.

Both lead­ers left the news con­fer­ence for a work­ing lunch, fol­low­ing which they will trav­el to Point Lisas for a tour.

Dr Ali's State Vis­it runs un­til Sun­day.