Planning Minister meets Israeli officials

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh met with Is­rael’s Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Mat­tanya Co­hen, and MASHAV Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Am­bas­sador Ey­nat Shlein on Wednes­day to dis­cuss ex­pand­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion on mod­ern agri­cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, smart cities, cli­mate re­silience and in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

The of­fi­cials al­so ex­plored pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship mod­els and mea­sures to sup­port small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

Swarats­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to strength­en in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships to ad­vance eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, food se­cu­ri­ty, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and cli­mate re­silience.

Co­hen reaf­firmed Is­rael’s com­mit­ment to ex­pand­ing co­op­er­a­tion with Trinidad and To­ba­go through knowl­edge-shar­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and prac­ti­cal ex­per­tise.

Shlein said MASHAV looked for­ward to work­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go on pro­grammes aimed at build­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty and sup­port­ing long-term, in­clu­sive de­vel­op­ment.

The meet­ing end­ed with both sides agree­ing to ex­plore tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion ini­tia­tives and iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty projects to strength­en bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions.