TT Chamber, Georgetown Chamber sign trade agreement

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TT Cham­ber) and the George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try (GC­CI) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) aimed at strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al trade, in­vest­ment and pri­vate sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana.

The agree­ment, signed on Wednes­day by TT Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Karen Yip Chuck and GC­CI Pres­i­dent Kathy Smith, es­tab­lish­es a for­mal frame­work for both or­gan­i­sa­tions to work to­geth­er in ad­dress­ing trade chal­lenges, pro­mot­ing in­vest­ment and ex­pand­ing com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es in both coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to the TT Cham­ber, the agree­ment builds on work that be­gan dur­ing the 2023–2024 Cham­ber year un­der then TT Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj and then GC­CI Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Tuck­er, along­side for­mer Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent Kester Hut­son. That col­lab­o­ra­tion fo­cused on iden­ti­fy­ing and doc­u­ment­ing non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers af­fect­ing trade and in­vest­ment be­tween the two coun­tries.

The Cham­ber said the ini­tia­tive helped re­solve sev­er­al long­stand­ing com­mer­cial is­sues, im­proved di­a­logue be­tween the or­gan­i­sa­tions and cre­at­ed an ev­i­dence-based in­ven­to­ry of bar­ri­ers to guide fu­ture ad­vo­ca­cy. As trade be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana con­tin­ues to grow, the MoU is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a struc­tured ap­proach to ad­dress­ing out­stand­ing chal­lenges.

L to R – TT Chamber CEO, Dr. Vashti Guyadeen; TT Chamber President, Karen Yip Chuck; GCCI President, Kathy Smith; and Energy Chamber President and CEO, Dr. Priya Marajh. [Image courtesy TT Chamber]

TT CHAMBER

Speak­ing at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Pres­i­dent Karen Yip Chuck said the agree­ment goes be­yond the sign­ing of a doc­u­ment and cre­ates an en­dur­ing frame­work for the pri­vate sec­tors of both coun­tries to iden­ti­fy ob­sta­cles, ad­vo­cate for prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions and de­vel­op new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Yip Chuck said the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive is to make it eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to op­er­ate across both mar­kets, strength­en re­gion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and de­liv­er tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens. She added that the Cham­ber in­tends for the agree­ment to be­come a "liv­ing frame­work" ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing mea­sur­able re­sults.

Pres­i­dent Kathy Smith said col­lab­o­ra­tion is one of the GC­CI's core val­ues and not­ed that the agree­ment is de­signed to tack­le is­sues af­fect­ing trade, par­tic­u­lar­ly non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers.

Smith said both Cham­bers will work to­geth­er to iden­ti­fy and re­solve mar­ket ac­cess chal­lenges while col­lab­o­rat­ing on projects that en­hance eco­nom­ic and so­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties for their mem­bers. She added that the part­ner­ship will al­so in­volve shar­ing re­search and in­for­ma­tion on sec­tors with strong de­vel­op­ment po­ten­tial.

TT Cham­ber Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Dr. Vashti Guyadeen said the suc­cess of the agree­ment will de­pend on the sys­tems es­tab­lished to sup­port busi­ness­es. Guyadeen ex­plained that both Cham­bers will cre­ate for­mal mech­a­nisms al­low­ing com­pa­nies to sub­mit trade-re­lat­ed con­cerns, which will then be doc­u­ment­ed, val­i­dat­ed, pri­ori­tised and joint­ly mon­i­tored.

The MoU al­so es­tab­lish­es a Joint Cham­bers Work­ing Mech­a­nism to fa­cil­i­tate co­op­er­a­tion in trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion, busi­ness in­tel­li­gence and pol­i­cy ad­vo­ca­cy. It will al­so pro­vide a plat­form for both Cham­bers to en­gage their re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments with a uni­fied pri­vate sec­tor voice while mon­i­tor­ing progress on agreed ac­tions.

The TT Cham­ber said it will con­tin­ue fo­cus­ing on sup­port­ing the wider non-en­er­gy econ­o­my, in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, ex­porters, ser­vice providers, dis­trib­u­tors, re­tail­ers, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana.