Raphael John-Lall

For­mer trade min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said CAL’s re­cent de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly halt flights de­ci­sion cou­pled with few­er Venezue­lan ves­sels at T&T’s ports are “trou­bling.”

A Guardian Me­dia re­port last week in­formed that a source at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said on­ly two Venezue­lan car­go boats now dock month­ly, bring­ing in ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing and wood.

While in the past, up to three car­go boats came week­ly to the Kings Wharf port in San Fer­nan­do, bring­ing in pot­tery, bags, plas­tic chairs, lum­ber, and cloth­ing.

The Guardian Me­dia re­port al­so not­ed at the Ce­dros port, pas­sen­ger ar­rivals are al­so de­clin­ing.

Bharath, who is now a con­sul­tant with a Japan­ese bank and ad­vi­sor to a gov­ern­ment in the South Pa­cif­ic re­gion, ex­plained why all of this spells bad news.

“The re­cent sus­pen­sion of flights to Venezuela and the sharp drop in ves­sel traf­fic to our ports high­light a trou­bling re­al­i­ty, the frag­ile trad­ing links that still ex­ist be­tween T&T and Venezuela are now un­der se­vere threat. For many of our small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, these routes rep­re­sent vi­tal chan­nels of com­merce, al­though not sig­nif­i­cant in T&T’s to­tal ex­port val­ue.”

How­ev­er, he added that T&T can­not af­ford to treat this as a pass­ing in­con­ve­nience.

“It is yet an­oth­er re­minder that as a small, open econ­o­my, T&T must move quick­ly to di­ver­si­fy both our mar­kets and our sources of sup­ply. Our en­er­gy am­bi­tions with Venezuela have al­ready been stalled by sanc­tions and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions. Now, even the mod­est flow of trade is be­ing dis­rupt­ed.”

He spoke about pos­si­ble so­lu­tions.

“What is ur­gent­ly re­quired is a clear, proac­tive plan. Gov­ern­ment must es­tab­lish tar­get­ed sup­port for our SMEs — low-in­ter­est fi­nanc­ing, ex­port fa­cil­i­ta­tion ser­vices, and guar­an­teed car­go and ship­ping so­lu­tions in­to al­ter­na­tive mar­kets. At the same time, we must ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue trade mis­sions in­to CARI­COM, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, so that busi­ness­es that once looked to Venezuela and the USA can find new buy­ers.”

On the en­er­gy front, he ad­vis­es that T&T must ac­cel­er­ate re­gion­al part­ner­ships with Guyana, Suri­name, and Bar­ba­dos, and in­vest in re­new­able so­lu­tions at home.

“On lo­gis­tics, we must make our ports and cus­toms process­es far more ef­fi­cient, so our ex­porters are not priced out of new op­por­tu­ni­ties. Most im­por­tant­ly, we must re­store con­fi­dence. Busi­ness­es to­day, af­ter nine years of de­cline and de­cay, op­er­ate in a hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment and in­vestors need to know that gov­ern­ment has a plan to nav­i­gate this tur­bu­lence. With­out that con­fi­dence, in­vest­ment will stall, jobs will be lost, and our eco­nom­ic base will fur­ther erode.”

He con­clud­ed by say­ing that the les­son is clear.

“T&T can­not re­main pas­sive ob­servers of glob­al events. If we act swift­ly, strate­gi­cal­ly, and in close part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor, we can turn this mo­ment of un­cer­tain­ty in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty to strength­en our econ­o­my and pro­tect the liveli­hoods of our peo­ple.”

Trav­el agency hop­ing for re­cov­ery

De­spite the mount­ing ten­sions among T&T, Venezuela and the US, So­phie Navar­ro, as­sis­tant man­ag­er at Navar­ro’s Trav­el Ser­vice, based in Port-of-Spain is con­fi­dent that T&T na­tion­als will con­tin­ue to trav­el to Venezuela for leisure and to do busi­ness­es.

In the lat­est es­ca­la­tion on Thurs­day, Venezuela’s vice pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez called T&T’s Gov­ern­ment a “vas­sal” of the Unit­ed States and warned T&T from be­ing used to desta­bi­lize Venezuela.

Two weeks ago, in a me­dia re­lease, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) said it will tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend flights be­tween Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Cara­cas, Venezuela.

The air­line said its BW300/301 ser­vices, set to op­er­ate on Sep­tem­ber 6, 13, 20, and 27, were sus­pend­ed. Pas­sen­gers hold­ing con­firmed tick­ets are be­ing ad­vised to reach out to the air­line for re­book­ing/re­fund op­tions.

Caribbean Air­lines re­sumed fly­ing to Cara­cas on May 13, 2023, sev­er­al years af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic shut­tered air­line routes across the world.

The air­line has not pub­licly giv­en a rea­son for the sus­pen­sion.

De­spite this, Navar­ro told the Busi­ness Guardian that busi­ness is good as lo­cals con­tin­ue to flock to pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions in Venezuela like Mar­gari­ta via RU­TA­CA air­lines.

“We just came off a very suc­cess­ful sum­mer sea­son of trav­el be­tween Trinidad and Mar­gari­ta/Cara­cas. Nat­u­ral­ly, af­ter such a boom, we are see­ing a de­cline in num­bers with schools re­open­ing and va­ca­tions end­ing. That be­ing said, we have not seen few­er re­quests than ex­pect­ed for this time of year.”

Giv­en the geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in­volv­ing the US, Venezuela and T&T, she re­mained op­ti­mistic that busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties will en­dure as the dust set­tles.

“We have a long his­to­ry of busi­ness with Venezuela and strong fam­i­ly ties be­tween T&T and Venezuela, and I be­lieve this is why there is still a steady stream of re­quests for these flights. These ‘ups and downs’ are to be ex­pect­ed when it comes to po­lit­i­cal dis­course, and we can­not be­gin to pre­dict what the gov­ern­ments and po­lit­i­cal par­ties have in store for us next.”

She said for now, they are sim­ply tak­ing things as they come and as they are in­formed.

“At this mo­ment, we re­main con­fi­dent in sell­ing these flights with RU­TA­CA Air­lines and in of­fer­ing these pack­ages to Mar­gari­ta. We con­tin­ue to see book­ings com­ing in, and we are hap­py to pro­vide ser­vice to this clien­tele.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta she pro­vid­ed, 13,000 T&T na­tion­als have trav­elled to Mar­gari­ta with RU­TA­CA Air­lines over the past two years.

Eco­nom­ic fore­cast

Ac­cord­ing to a Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­men­tal Pro­gram (UNDP) eco­nom­ic re­port last week, Venezuela’s econ­o­my will have an­oth­er year of strong eco­nom­ic growth and is pro­ject­ed to grow by 5.8 per­cent by the end of 2025.

T&T’s ex­ports to Venezuela were US$5.53 mil­lion dur­ing 2024, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade. Some of T&T’s ex­ports for that year in­clud­ed es­sen­tial oils, cos­met­ics and toi­letries, ar­ti­cles of ap­par­el and plas­tics.

T&T’s im­ports from Venezuela were US$2.39 mil­lion dur­ing 2024, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

Some of T&T’s im­ports from Venezuela in­clud­ed glass prod­ucts, iron and steel and bev­er­ages like spir­its and vine­gar.

Be­tween 2018 and 2022, there was a sharp de­cline in trade be­tween T&T and Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from Venezuela’s now de­funct trade agency, CEN­COEX in 2018, 22 Venezue­lan com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$25,563,473 worth of prod­ucts to T&T. By 2022, on­ly three Venezue­lan com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$76,317 worth of prod­ucts to T&T.