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Government to Explore New Areas of Co-operation with Kuwait

February 20, 2008

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Prime Minister Bruce Golding has expressed the Government’s desire to explore a number of new areas of co-operation with the government and business leaders of Kuwait. He said the Government wanted to look at a number of investment opportunities, including tourism and identifying long-term supply contracts for Liquid Natural Gas as an alternative source of energy.
Mr Golding, State Minister for Transport and Works, Mr Joseph Hibbert and other government officials, met on Feb 19 at Jamaica House with representatives of a high-level Kuwaiti delegation, which was led by the Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Kuwait Friendship Group, Mr Ahmad Al- Abdullah.
During their discussions Mr Golding expressed Jamaica’s gratitude to Kuwait for its assistance with its road repairs and improvement programme. He said the assistance being provided under the Kuwaiti Development Fund was highly appreciated but that there were tremendous opportunities for other areas of co-operation to be explored between both countries. Mr Golding pointed to plans for a number of exciting investments being considered by Jamaica which would include the establishment of an international financial centre and a cruise ship port for downtown Kingston, noting that these would provide major opportunities for Kuwaiti investors and businessmen to invest in Jamaica. The advantages Mr Golding said, include the island’s proximity to the US, coupled with existing preferential bilateral trading arrangements with the United States, which allows goods manufactured in Jamaica, duty free access in a number of categories to the US market. He said negotiations are underway to expand these categories.
He also informed the Kuwaiti delegation about the European Partnership Agreement to be formalized in April, through which goods from the Caribbean region will have duty free, quota free access to the European markets and that this would be another area through which Jamaica hopes to be able to attract the co-operation of Kuwait.
The Kuwaiti delegation led by Mr Ahmad Al-Abdullah, Chairman of the Kuwait Friendship group, has extended an invitation to Prime Minister Golding to visit Kuwait for further discussions on improving the areas of co-operation discussed. Other members of the Kuwaiti delegation included the Deputy Chief of Mission of Kuwait in Washington, Mr Nabeel Al-Dakheel and the Deputy Director General of the Kuwait Development Fund, Ghanem Al Ghunaiuran.

Last Updated: February 20, 2008

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