In ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing which in­clud­ed cur­rent and past pres­i­dents and CEOs of the TTMA's mem­ber­ship at the an­niver­sary lun­cheon, the min­is­ter com­mend­ed the busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tion for its "un­stint­ing ser­vice to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers over the last six decades."

Gopee-Scoon al­so not­ed the T&T vi­sion to be the voice of man­u­fac­tur­ers in T&T, "cre­at­ing val­ue and pro­vid­ing world-class ser­vice to its mem­ber­ship."

"The of­fi­cial pol­i­cy frame­work of the Gov­ern­ment high­lights Trinidad and To­ba­go's strong man­u­fac­tur­ing base as an in­trin­sic area of strength," she said.

" Just last Fri­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter un­der­scored that the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor will re­main among the Gov­ern­ment's top pri­or­i­ties as di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ini­tia­tives are ex­pand­ed."

Gopee-Scoon took the op­por­tu­ni­ty the high­light ini­tia­tives be­ing un­der­tak­en to at­tract in­vest­ments that are de­vel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed, geared to­wards im­prov­ing the coun­try's over­all com­pet­i­tive­ness and di­ver­si­fy­ing and ex­pand­ing ex­port mar­kets.

She said: "As men­tioned in this year's bud­get de­bate, in­creased trade, in both goods and ser­vices, is one way in which Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tends to in­crease its rev­enue streams, ac­quire for­eign ex­change, cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs and, in the long-term, make the econ­o­my less vul­ner­a­ble to the volatil­i­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty mar­kets.

"To this end, we must widen the range of goods and ser­vices ex­port­ed; as well as ex­ploit ex­ist­ing mar­kets and cre­ate new mar­ket ac­cess op­por­tu­ni­ties with strate­gic part­ners."

She said the Trade Min­istry is cur­rent­ly craft­ing a na­tion­al ex­port strat­e­gy to im­prove ex­port per­for­mance from three broad ap­proach­es–strength­en­ing ex­porter ca­pac­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness, en­hanc­ing the lo­cal trad­ing en­vi­ron­ment and ex­port pro­mo­tion.

The min­is­ter praised TTMA mem­bers for their re­cent par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ha­vana In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Fair 2016, which she said sig­nalled their will­ing­ness to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment in pur­suit of strength­ened com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship with Cu­ba. She said there are tremen­dous prospects for ex­pan­sion of lo­cal ex­ports to that coun­try.

Gopee-Scoon added that the Gov­ern­ment was pleased to col­lab­o­rate with the TTMA, as ap­pro­pri­ate, in their re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter's ap­peal to as­sist Haiti in their time of dis­tress, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Matthew in Oc­to­ber.

TTMA pres­i­dent Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in con­grat­u­lat­ed the mem­ber­ship on cel­e­brat­ing 60 years of ex­cel­lence and gave a his­tor­i­cal overview of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's jour­ney over the decades.

He ex­pressed con­fi­dence that giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, T&T will again see the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor take the lead in strength­en­ing and mov­ing the econ­o­my for­ward.