No India visit if there were no trade talks: Trinidad & Tobago PM

New Delhi, Jan 14 (PTI) Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar strongly defended her two-week long India visit saying she would not have come had there been no trade and business involved. "Yes, some of us are of Indian origin and we were happy to be in the country from where our forefathers came from. But that was just a part of the visit," she said in a video-conference with journalists here and in Port-of-Spain. "If there was no trade or business conversation or partnership I would not have been here in my capacity as prime minister," she said. The Caribbean media wanted to know the tangible benefits of her two-week long visit to India and the expenses incurred by the Trinidad and Tobago exchequer. Describing her visit as a "resounding success", Bissessar listed out a number of agreements signed during the visit and the help India has promised to extend to the IT sector in the Caribbean nation. Speaking of the tangible results, she said that agriculture experts would be visiting Trinidad and Tobago to resuscitate the coconut industry which has been struggling due to red palm mite disease. On the expenses incurred on the visit, Bissessar said that the official delegation was hosted by the Government of India while the business delegation paid for their expenses. She described as "a mind-boggling experience" the visit to her ancestral village Bhelupur in Buxar district of the eastern Indian state of Bihar. Kamla Persad Bissessar has been in India since January 6. Besides official level talks with Indian leaders and signing of some agreements, she also attended the annual meeting of the Indian diaspora in Jaipur in the northwest Indian state of Rajasthan where she received the Bharatiya Divas Samman award. In addition, she held meetings with Indian business leaders in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. Besides visiting her ancestral village in Bihar, she also visited the Kolkata Port from where her forefathers had set sail for the Caribbean. PTI Caption for pic: Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar speaking at an interactive session on business in Mumbai on Friday. PTI Photo