T&T, India formalise 15 new agreements: Modi’s govt also donates 2,000 laptops

Trinidad and To­ba­go and In­dia have for­malised 15 new agree­ments span­ning health, ed­u­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture, dig­i­tal ser­vices, trade, and cul­ture.

One of the stand­out agree­ments is the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing on Quick Im­pact Projects (QIPs). “Through this MOU, the gov­ern­ment of In­dia will pro­vide grant fund­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of short ges­ta­tion QIPs which will not ex­ceed US$50,000 for each project. A max­i­mum of five projects will be of­fered in each fi­nan­cial year,” a joint state­ment con­firmed yes­ter­day.

In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di al­so an­nounced a do­na­tion of 2,000 lap­tops to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tive, de­scrib­ing it as a re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “am­bi­tious vi­sion of digi­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion.”

Health­care sup­port in­cludes 20 dial­y­sis units, two sea am­bu­lances, and a pros­thet­ic limb fit­ment camp for 800 in­di­vid­u­als.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar wel­comed the con­tri­bu­tion, say­ing it would “take health­care co­op­er­a­tion be­yond med­i­cines and equip­ment.”

In agri­cul­ture, Mo­di hand­ed over the first batch of US$1 mil­lion in agro-ma­chin­ery to NAMDE­V­CO and pledged sup­port in mil­let cul­ti­va­tion, sea­weed fer­tilis­er and nat­ur­al farm­ing.

In­dia al­so com­mit­ted to train­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials, foren­sic ex­perts, and jus­tice sec­tor per­son­nel, with T&T re­quest­ing help to es­tab­lish a re­gion­al foren­sic sci­ence fa­cil­i­ty.

In­dia will al­so sup­port digi­tis­ing the state land reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem.

T&T will be­come the first Caribbean na­tion to adopt In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI), with fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion planned on In­dia Stack tools like Dig­iLock­er and e-Sign.

The vis­it by Mo­di al­so brought a boost to cul­tur­al ex­change.

On cul­tur­al co­op­er­a­tion, the gov­ern­ments re­newed their Pro­gramme of Cul­tur­al Ex­changes for 2025–2028, through which steel­pan artistes will trav­el to In­dia. Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di al­so an­nounced train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for Trinida­di­an pun­dits, who will par­tic­i­pate in In­dia’s Gee­ta Ma­hot­sav.

Mo­di al­so thanked the T&T Gov­ern­ment for pro­mot­ing Yo­ga and Hin­di in schools and of­fered to send Yo­ga in­struc­tors to sup­port its in­clu­sion in the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum.

• 15 bi­lat­er­al agree­ments signed across health, ed­u­ca­tion, trade, ICT, cul­ture, and jus­tice

• 2,000 lap­tops do­nat­ed to sup­port Form One stu­dents

• 20 dial­y­sis ma­chines, 2 sea am­bu­lances, and pros­thet­ic limb camp for 800 peo­ple

• US$1 mil­lion in agro-ma­chin­ery hand­ed over to NAMDE­V­CO

• QIP agree­ment: up to five projects an­nu­al­ly at US$50,000 each

• T&T to adopt In­dia’s UPI, ex­plore Dig­iLock­er, e-Sign, GeM

• In­di­an sup­port pledged for foren­sic sci­ence cen­tre and le­gal train­ing

• Young women crick­eters and pun­dits to train in In­dia

• Steel­pan artistes to tour In­dia un­der new cul­tur­al ex­change pro­gramme

• UWI to host re­vived aca­d­e­m­ic chairs in Hin­di, In­di­an Stud­ies and Ayurve­da

• T&T joins Glob­al Bio­fu­el Al­liance and Dis­as­ter Re­silient In­fra­struc­ture Coali­tion

• In­dia to pro­vide so­lar PV sys­tem for Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs

• OCI cards ex­tend­ed to sixth-gen­er­a­tion T&T cit­i­zens of In­di­an de­scent

• Mu­tu­al sup­port for UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil can­di­da­cies