Learn to speak Spanish

He added that the adoption of Spanish would have to begin at kindergarten level in the country’s school system.

He said TT has never had a high rate of success in exporting to Spanish speaking countries.

“All of the treaties signed by CARICOM with Venezuela, Columbia, Guatemala and various Spanish- speaking countries in the past have not yielded the results we would havd liked,” Hosein said. However, he hoped that given the state of the economy extra measures would be put in place so that a trade mission leaving for Cuba in the next few weeks “would yield different and superior results than what we had in the past.” Hosein said part of the reason this country has not done well historically in trading with Spanish speaking countries is the language barrier but it is also partly because local entrepreneurs have a secure, safe market in CARICOM and they can easilly export their products to the English speaking CARICOM markets.

However, he said most of the obstacle in trading with the Spanish-speaking territories has to do with the language barrier “and therefore if we are serious about increasing trade with Spanish- speaking Latin America, our primary, secondary and even kindergarten-level interventions in Spanish have to become almost part of our way of life in Trinidad and Tobago, as it is in Latin America in terms of learning English.”