Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon is to­day lead­ing a del­e­ga­tion of busi­ness­men on a trade mis­sion to Ja­maica dur­ing the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 20 24, 2022.

The mis­sion, or­gan­ised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and Ex­porTT, the Na­tion­al Ex­port Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go 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 Lim­it­ed, Caribbean Health Foods Ltd, Chem Clean Ltd, Mi­cro Milling Ltd, Nio Dig­i­tal, Ro­jan Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed and An­gos­tu­ra amongst oth­ers.

Ja­maica is a sig­nif­i­cant trad­ing part­ner with Trinidad and To­ba­go rank­ing among its top 50 im­port sources and top 15 ex­port des­ti­na­tions for the last five years.

Over the pe­ri­od 2017–2021 Trinidad and To­ba­go 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 trade mis­sion is geared to­wards de­ter­min­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the Ja­maican mar­ket for Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pa­nies and es­tab­lish­ing and deep­en­ing strate­gic busi­ness and lo­gis­ti­cal re­la­tion­ships be­tween man­u­fac­tur­ers and buy­ers.

This mis­sion, the Min­istry said, is a key project un­der the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive, which is a strate­gic ini­tia­tive t of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go geared to­wards in­creas­ing the val­ue of all non-en­er­gy ex­ports over the next three years.

The Min­is­ter will talk with For­eign Trade and In­dus­try and Com­merce Min­is­te­r­i­al coun­ter­parts in Ja­maica and oth­er key of­fi­cials.