In­dia’s Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T next week as part of a wider Caribbean tour aimed at strength­en­ing diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic ties with the re­gion.

In a state­ment, In­dia’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs said Jais­hankar’s vis­it, sched­uled be­tween May 2 and May 10, will in­clude stops in Ja­maica, Suri­name and Trinidad and To­ba­go, where he is ex­pect­ed to en­gage with se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on bi­lat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al is­sues. The min­istry said the vis­it is part of on­go­ing ef­forts to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion with coun­tries that share long­stand­ing his­tor­i­cal links with In­dia, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with large In­do-Caribbean pop­u­la­tions de­scend­ed from in­den­tured labour­ers, of­ten re­ferred to as Gir­mi­tiya com­mu­ni­ties.

Jais­hankar is ex­pect­ed to hold dis­cus­sions with lo­cal lead­er­ship on ar­eas in­clud­ing trade, in­vest­ment, de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion and glob­al is­sues of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.