AN­DRE WOR­RELL

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Gabriel Faria says lo­cal com­pa­nies should look to Cuban mar­ket where they are op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness growth.

Faria speak­ing yes­ter­day at an event host­ed by the Cham­ber en­ti­tled A New Era in Com­merce: Cu­ba, The New Fron­tier, said: "The Cuban mar­ket has great po­ten­tial for Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pa­nies. With a pop­u­la­tion in the vicin­i­ty of eleven mil­lion strong, busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties are rife for the as­tute man­u­fac­tur­er and ser­vice provider."

He said in the Cari­com re­gion, T&T is the main ex­porter of goods and ser­vices to Cu­ba and lo­cal com­pa­nies should con­tin­ue to build on their pres­ence with­in the mar­ket.

Faria said the bulk of ex­ports from T&T to Cu­ba are from the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

He ex­plained: "Cur­rent­ly an­hy­drous am­mo­nia (98 per cent), min­er­al prod­ucts (0.67 per cent) and pa­per and pa­per­board prod­ucts (0.33 per cent) top the list of ex­ports from T&T to Cu­ba."

Notwith­stand­ing the large por­tion of en­er­gy-re­lat­ed ex­ports from T&T to the Cuban mar­ket, he said there are many oth­er ar­eas in the Cuban mar­ket for T&T com­pa­nies to ex­plore.

"Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tre for Pro­mo­tion of For­eign Trade and For­eign In­vest­ment for Cu­ba (CEPEC), the most at­trac­tive ar­eas for for­eign in­vest­ment in Cu­ba–based on 2013 da­ta–re en­er­gy and en­er­gy ex­trac­tion (42 per cent), tourism (13 per cent), In­dus­try (10 per cent), food (7 per cent), con­struc­tion (6 per cent), agri­cul­ture (4 per cent), trans­port (2 per cent) and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and sug­ar (2 per cent)," he said. Faria added that de­spite some of the reser­va­tions cur­rent­ly sur­round­ing the Cuban econ­o­my, T&T com­pa­nies should move ag­gres­sive­ly to seize ex­ist­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, as oth­er coun­tries had al­ready be­gun to do so.

"Fi­del Cas­tro's pass­ing last month and an in­com­ing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the US cre­ates some mea­sure of un­cer­tain­ty re­gard­ing the tra­jec­to­ry and pace of US-Cu­ba re­la­tions. Notwith­stand­ing the lat­est de­vel­op­ments, the Cuban mar­ket of­fers un­tapped op­por­tu­ni­ties up­on which T&T com­pa­nies can cap­i­talise. Many oth­er coun­tries such as Japan, Chi­na and Ja­maica are al­so ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in Cu­ba," he said.