International cargo is a "growing market" in which goods are being imported from new territories other than North America, says James Devers, senior vice-president, Laparkan (Trinidad) Ltd.
"Although North America has been an important origin for a lot of our customers and a lot of people in the Caribbean, now we see people are looking at Curacao, Panama and definitely Asia, particularly China. We are seeing increasing requests for cargo out of those origins because of globalisation, people want to access goods from around the world," he said.
Devers was speaking to the Business Guardian at last week's Trade and Investment Convention (TIC), which was held at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad hotel, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain.
Laparkan is a freight forwarder operating in T&T for almost 20 years. The company has a Caribbean presence for more than 30 years.
Ranking itself as being one of the top five freight forwarders in T&T in terms of volume of goods shipped, Devers said Laparkan brings in goods from North and South America, Europe and Asia.
Though business is good, he said it's not so good when it comes to rates shippers charge.
"I would say probably the biggest challenge would be the fact that a lot of the shipping line rates are increasing, and because we are a freight forwarder, we ship on a variety of shipping lines to bring our cargo in.
"What we are seeing is that shipping lines are starting to raise their lines again out of Asia and out of North America, so what that does is that it puts a lot of pressure on our customers and, ultimately, the consumers would have to pay for that cost when they go to the grocery store, when they go to buy their appliances and when they go to buy clothes.
"Whereas, when you have an economy that is trying to come back and you have the cost of shipping is going to increase, it's going to make the cost of goods affect inflation."
While most in the business community continue to clamour for better service from Port of Port-of-Spain, it's different for Laparkan.
"Our experience in Port-of-Spain has not been that bad because we have a great relationship with the Port Authority. We use Shed Ten, which is the main warehouse for lesser container-load cargo. Sometimes the Port of Port-of-Spain gets a bad reputation, but it is not as bad as people say it is," Dever said.
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