- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 19:36

India Prime Minister to visit Trinidad and Tobago in July

PRIME MINISTER of India Shri Narendra Modi is expected to visit Trinidad and Tobago in July, as part of a five-nation tour covering Africa, South America, the Caribbean and Middle East. The Economic Times has reported that Modi will start his tour in Morocco, India’s growing security and economic partner in North Africa, then to Argentina, a partner for critical minerals, food security and defence. He will then go to Brazil from July 6-7 for the BRICS Summit. He is expected to visit TT next, then Jordan. Economic times reported that visits to some countries in the tour, such as Morocco, were in the works for some time but could not be finalised owing to scheduling issues. According to the India High Commission’s website there have been several visits by leaders between the two countries. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar visited India as guest at Pravasi Bharatiya, a celebration which commemorated the return of Mahatma Gandhi, in January 2012, where she was given the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, the highest award given to non-resident Indians, people of Indian origin or an organisation or institution established and run by the non-resident Indians or people of Indian origin. Persad-Bissessar’s paternal grandparents emigrated from India to TT in the 1880s as part of the East Indian indenture system. Persad-Bissessar was not the only TT leader to visit India. Then prime minister Basdeo Panday paid a state visit to India in 1997, as a guest on Republic Day. Former prime minister Keith Rowley also made a working visit to Mumbai in May 2024. Modi is also not the first Indian prime minister to visit TT. Prime minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid a visit in 1999, and prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh led a high-level delegation for the CHOGM summit in Port of Spain in 2009. Modi and Rowley met in London in April 2018 at the CHOGM summit in New York, in September 2019 for the first India-Caricom leaders summit and again in Georgetown, Guyana in November 2024 on the second India-Caricom summit. The High Commission’s dossier on TT also noted that bilateral trade between India and TT has grown significantly from the lows during the covid19 pandemic, with major trade items inducing mineral fuels, mineral oils and products, iron and steel, slag, ash and aluminium. The dossier also said TT’s major imports from India include vehicles, parts and accessories, iron and steel, pharmaceutical products and plastic. The high commission’s dossier said for the period 2023-2024, the total trade between the two countries amounted to US$368.96 million, with exports from India amounting to US$109.06 million and imports to India amounting to US$259.9 million. For the period 2024-2025, the two countries saw US$341.61 million in trade, with India’s exports amounting to US$120.65 million and India’s imports from TT amounting to US$220.9 million. In 2024 TT was one of the first Caribbean countries to adopt India’s UPI real-time payment technology, through an agreement between the ministry of digital transformation and NPCI International Payments Ltd, for the development of a real-time payment platform similar to the UPI. In May 2025, TT got a donation of 19,000 kilogrammes of rice and 12,500 litres of edible oil from the government of India through the Indian High Commissioner Dr Pradeep Rajpurohit during a handover ceremony in Chaguanas. In 2024, Rowley met with Naveen Jindal, chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, who had expressed interest in the mothballed Petrotrin refinery, but he withdrew his offer amid concerns raised by then opposition leader Persad-Bissessar over allegations of corruption. The post India Prime Minister to visit Trinidad and Tobago in July appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.