President Dr Irfaan Ali arrived in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago this afternoon for a State Visit.
The visit will allow the two countries to further explore areas of cooperation and is a follow-up to the visit the Twin Island Republic’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley made to Guyana where a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between.
“We will be going through what they are doing, the evolution of their industrial development, manufacturing, we will go through the MoU to look at areas we can move forward very quickly and that is directly between Guyana and Trinidad in agriculture, the removal of the trade barriers which we have been working on for the last few months,” President Ali told reporters hours before departing Guyana.
The Head of State noted that Trinidad and Tobago also signaled its intentions to build the energy corridor with Guyana and Suriname to have a broad development concept in terms of the gas strategy for the region.
“The Prime Minister and I discussed this, and the Prime Minister has expressed Trinidad’s willingness to work with Guyana and Suriname in the development of our gas resource and look at other opportunities in the energy sector. So, that has been communicated,” he said.
President Ali said the second half of his visit will see his participation in the T&T Agri Investment Forum from August 19 to 21, which will also allow CARICOM leaders to assess progress made to reduce the region’s food import bill by 25 percent by 2025 for which Guyana has the lead role.
The Head of State said he will also be meeting with the leadership of the T&T-headquartered Republic Bank Limited to discuss financing for Investment in agriculture. “They have aside some resources for the food production system in agriculture so there are a number of proposals that Guyana has been able to work with other countries in developing,” he disclosed.