An­tho­ny Aboud, chair­man of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion, said buy­ers have in­di­cat­ed clear pref­er­ences for new sources of sup­ply, giv­en the glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate. "As the world econ­o­my be­gins a slow but steady climb to­wards growth, cor­po­rate and pub­lic sec­tor buy­ers are look­ing for new sources of goods and ser­vices, with a view to re­duc­ing their costs and im­prov­ing their op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies.

"Our ex­hibitors will use the struc­tured busi­ness-to-busi­ness net­work­ing sys­tems at TIC 2010 to show buy­ers how they can help them ful­fil those ob­jec­tives." TIC 2010, to be host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, First Cit­i­zens, TSTT and Bmo­bile and Black­ber­ry, will take place May 19 to 22 at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

TIC has ne­go­ti­at­ed spe­cial ac­com­mo­da­tion rates at the Hy­att for lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pants, and is of­fer­ing spe­cial air­fares from Co­pa Air­lines, Caribbean Air­lines, Con­ti­nen­tal Air­lines and Amer­i­can Air­lines. He said TIC tracks each buy­er's spe­cif­ic com­mer­cial in­ter­ests and helps buy­ers and ex­hibitors iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties in com­mon via its B2B Match­mak­ing ser­vice so that par­ties can be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions im­me­di­ate­ly at TIC.

The TIC data­base records the top ten sec­tors of buy­er in­ter­est to date as:

1. Com­put­ers, elec­tron­ics

2. Mul­ti­sec­toral (cross-sec­tor dis­trib­u­tor­ships)

3. House­hold prod­ucts

4. Fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances

5. Agri­cul­ture

6. Pa­per and print­ing

7. Plas­tics, rub­ber prod­ucts

8. Au­to­mo­tive

9. Tex­tiles and ap­par­el

10. Re­al es­tate

Aboud said TIC is the re­gion's biggest B2B event and has a track record of gen­er­at­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$50 mil­lion each year. TIC 2009 was at­tend­ed by 4,600 peo­ple, in­clud­ing more than 338 in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers from 35 coun­tries and 1,500 buy­ers from T&T.