Kirk Ram­per­sad

In T&T, Christ­mas is more than a hol­i­day; it is an eco­nom­ic event of na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. From Paramin to Scar­bor­ough, the fes­tive sea­son shapes re­tail per­for­mance, dri­ves non-en­er­gy growth and in­creas­ing­ly ex­pos­es the fi­nan­cial strain fac­ing house­holds.

As the coun­try moves through the 2025 Christ­mas sea­son, the num­bers paint a mixed pic­ture. In­fla­tion has cooled, but wage growth re­mains un­even. Con­sumer cred­it is ex­pand­ing, food prices con­tin­ue to feel high and dig­i­tal shop­ping is qui­et­ly re­draw­ing where – and how –Christ­mas dol­lars are spent.

On the sur­face, the econ­o­my ap­pears sta­ble. In prac­tice, many house­holds feel any­thing but com­fort­able.

The macro pic­ture: Sta­bil­i­ty that doesn’t al­ways feel sta­ble

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­al GDP grew by an es­ti­mat­ed 1.3 per cent in 2023 and was fore­cast to ex­pand by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.9 per cent in 2024. That growth is be­ing dri­ven large­ly by the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, in­clud­ing trade, ac­com­mo­da­tion, food ser­vices and re­tail-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty. Nom­i­nal GDP was pro­ject­ed at rough­ly TT$186.3 bil­lion in 2024, mar­gin­al­ly high­er than the es­ti­mat­ed TT$184.8 bil­lion a year ear­li­er.

At the same time, in­fla­tion has eased sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the post-pan­dem­ic surge. Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta in­di­cate that head­line in­fla­tion fell from high sin­gle-dig­it lev­els in 2022 to be­tween 0.3 and 0.9 per cent for much of 2024 and in­to 2025. Ex­ter­nal es­ti­mates place T&T’s in­fla­tion rate around 0.5 per cent in 2024, down sharply from over four per cent the year be­fore. By late 2025, year-on-year in­fla­tion hov­ered near 0.4 per cent, with food prices ris­ing at just un­der one per cent.

From a pol­i­cy­mak­er’s per­spec­tive, this looks like a rel­a­tive­ly be­nign Christ­mas en­vi­ron­ment: low in­fla­tion, mod­est growth and a sta­ble mon­e­tary stance, with the re­po rate held at 3.50 per cent. Yet for many con­sumers, the lived ex­pe­ri­ence is very dif­fer­ent.

Christ­mas ar­rives along­side school ex­pens­es, util­i­ty bills, gro­cery surges and trav­el costs – all at once. Even mod­est in­creas­es feel heav­ier when dis­pos­able in­come is stretched thin.

Why the Christ­mas ta­ble still feels ex­pen­sive

Food is the clear­est ex­am­ple of the gap be­tween av­er­ages and re­al­i­ty. Even when head­line in­fla­tion is low, food prices of­ten rise faster than the over­all in­dex, hit­ting low­er-and mid­dlein­come house­holds the hard­est.

Each De­cem­ber, the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion (CAD) un­der the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism (MT­TI), pub­lish­es a spe­cial “Christ­mas Edi­tion” su­per­mar­ket price sur­vey. The 2024 ex­er­cise cov­ered su­per­mar­kets na­tion­wide, track­ing sta­ple items such as ham, meat cuts, rice, peas, oil and bak­ing in­gre­di­ents. The re­sults con­sis­tent­ly show wide price vari­a­tions across out­lets – some­times for iden­ti­cal brands.

Sep­a­rate MT­TI up­dates con­firmed that dur­ing ear­ly De­cem­ber sur­veys, shop­pers could save mean­ing­ful amounts sim­ply by com­par­ing prices across su­per­mar­kets in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions. Yet the re­al­i­ty for many fam­i­lies is less flex­i­ble: lim­it­ed trans­port, time pres­sure and work sched­ules make com­par­i­son shop­ping dif­fi­cult.

The con­se­quence is a fa­mil­iar frus­tra­tion: the same trol­ley, a high­er bill. Sea­son­al mark-ups on pop­u­lar Christ­mas items com­pound the prob­lem, re­in­forc­ing the per­cep­tion that the cost of liv­ing is ris­ing even when na­tion­al in­fla­tion da­ta sug­gest oth­er­wise.

For busi­ness­es, this mat­ters. Price trans­paren­cy and per­ceived fair­ness have be­come crit­i­cal.

Con­sumers are more in­formed than ever, armed with of­fi­cial price lists, so­cial me­dia com­men­tary and What­sApp group com­par­isons. Re­tail­ers who ig­nore this sen­ti­ment risk rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age that can last long af­ter the dec­o­ra­tions come down.

How we’re pay­ing for Christ­mas

An­oth­er defin­ing fea­ture of the sea­son is how spend­ing is fi­nanced. The Cen­tral Bank’s Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin for mid-2024 showed cred­it growth of near­ly sev­en per cent year-on-year, dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by con­sumer lend­ing. In prac­ti­cal terms, more house­holds are lean­ing on cred­it cards, hire-pur­chase agree­ments, store fi­nanc­ing and per­son­al loans to man­age sea­son­al ex­pens­es.

This trend co­in­cides with soft­en­ing labour mar­ket con­di­tions. Un­em­ploy­ment rose to around 5.4 per cent in ear­ly 2024, up from just over four per cent months ear­li­er, while labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion de­clined. Add on­go­ing fis­cal pres­sures linked to volatile en­er­gy rev­enues and house­hold re­silience be­gins to look thin­ner than head­line in­di­ca­tors sug­gest.

The long-term risk is fa­mil­iar but of­ten over­looked in De­cem­ber: Christ­mas spend­ing does not dis­ap­pear in Jan­u­ary. It reap­pears as in­ter­est charges and min­i­mum pay­ments. House­holds that re­ly heav­i­ly on high-in­ter­est cred­it to fund sea­son­al con­sump­tion of­ten find that a grow­ing share of their 2026 in­come is pre-com­mit­ted to debt ser­vic­ing rather than sav­ings or in­vest­ment.

For busi­ness­es and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, this cre­ates a strate­gic dilem­ma. Short-term sales can be boost­ed with ag­gres­sive cred­it of­fers, but long-term loy­al­ty is built by trans­par­ent terms and re­spon­si­ble re­pay­ment struc­tures. Over-ex­tend­ed cus­tomers rarely be­come re­peat cus­tomers.

Dig­i­tal habits and the qui­et leak of Christ­mas dol­lars

Per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant struc­tur­al shift in Christ­mas shop­ping has been dig­i­tal. The sea­son is no longer con­fined to Fred­er­ick Street, Trinci­ty or Gulf City. In­creas­ing­ly, the mall is in our phones.

Lo­cal mar­ket­ing analy­sis of the 2023 hol­i­day pe­ri­od es­ti­mat­ed a near 15 per cent in­crease in Christ­mas e-com­merce ac­tiv­i­ty, dri­ven by so­cial me­dia pro­mo­tions and tar­get­ed ad­ver­tis­ing.

Re­gion­al re­tail stud­ies show that in­ter­na­tion­al plat­forms such as Ama­zon and Shein have be­come de­fault op­tions for many Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sumers, due to per­ceived price ad­van­tages, prod­uct va­ri­ety and con­ve­nience.

For the econ­o­my, this has two im­por­tant im­pli­ca­tions.

* First, there is spend­ing leak­age. Mon­ey spent on for­eign plat­forms by­pass­es lo­cal re­tail­ers, re­duces VAT col­lec­tions and weak­ens the mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect that keeps ac­tiv­i­ty cir­cu­lat­ing with­in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

* Sec­ond, con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions have shift­ed. Af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing easy check­out, ship­ment track­ing and re­spon­sive cus­tomer ser­vice on­line, shop­pers ex­pect sim­i­lar stan­dards lo­cal­ly. Busi­ness­es that treat dig­i­tal as op­tion­al risk los­ing not on­ly Christ­mas rev­enue, but year-round rel­e­vance.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal firms is not to com­pete head-on with glob­al play­ers, but to com­pete in­tel­li­gent­ly. Sim­ple mo­bile-friend­ly or­der­ing, click-and-col­lect op­tions, lo­cal de­liv­ery part­ner­ships and re­spon­sive What­sApp com­mu­ni­ca­tion can mean­ing­ful­ly close the ex­pe­ri­ence gap.

Con­sumer pro­tec­tion and the true cost of bad busi­ness

High-pres­sure fes­tive sell­ing al­so brings an in­crease in dis­putes: de­fec­tive prod­ucts, mis­lead­ing pro­mo­tions and con­fu­sion over re­turns.

The Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion has re­peat­ed­ly re­mind­ed busi­ness­es and shop­pers that “No Re­fund/No Ex­change” signs are not per­mit­ted un­der the law when goods are de­fec­tive or mis­rep­re­sent­ed.

Dur­ing the 2023–2024 fis­cal pe­ri­od, the Di­vi­sion processed over 600 con­sumer com­plaints and fa­cil­i­tat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$2.6 mil­lion in re­dress.

For busi­ness­es, these are not ab­stract fig­ures. Poor af­ter-sales ser­vice of­ten es­ca­lates in­to for­mal com­plaints, reg­u­la­to­ry in­volve­ment and last­ing rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age.

Con­verse­ly, clear poli­cies, hon­est ad­ver­tis­ing, trained staff and re­spon­sive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion in­creas­ing­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate rep­utable firms in a crowd­ed sea­son­al mar­ket. Trust has be­come a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

What this means for busi­ness­es

Tak­en to­geth­er, Christ­mas 2025 sends a clear sig­nal to T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

De­mand ex­ists, but it is frag­ile. In­fla­tion may be low, but con­sumers re­main cau­tious. Dig­i­tal is no longer op­tion­al and con­sumer aware­ness of rights is in­creas­ing.

The most re­silient busi­ness­es are re­spond­ing with five prac­ti­cal strate­gies:

* Build­ing val­ue, not just dis­counts, through cu­rat­ed bun­dles and trans­par­ent­ly priced of­fer­ings.

* Adopt­ing an om­nichan­nel ap­proach, blend­ing in-store pres­ence with so­cial me­dia en­gage­ment and sim­ple dig­i­tal or­der­ing.

* Pro­mot­ing re­spon­si­ble cred­it, recog­nis­ing that sus­tain­able cus­tomers are bet­ter than overex­tend­ed ones.

* Train­ing front­line staff to man­age sea­son­al stress and de­liv­er con­sis­tent ser­vice.

*Us­ing da­ta, draw­ing on pre­vi­ous Christ­mas pat­terns to man­age in­ven­to­ry, pric­ing and tim­ing more in­tel­li­gent­ly.

A win-win mind­set for shop­pers and busi­ness­es

For con­sumers, a few dis­ci­plined steps can soft­en Jan­u­ary’s fi­nan­cial hang­over: set­ting a firm De­cem­ber bud­get, pri­ori­tis­ing es­sen­tials, com­par­ing su­per­mar­ket prices, lim­it­ing high-in­ter­est cred­it and sup­port­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es where pos­si­ble.

For busi­ness­es, en­cour­ag­ing re­spon­si­ble spend­ing is not coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. It sig­nals part­ner­ship rather than ex­ploita­tion. In a small, rep­u­ta­tion-dri­ven mar­ket like T&T, trust built in De­cem­ber can trans­late in­to loy­al­ty through­out the year.

Bot­tom line

Christ­mas re­mains a pow­er­ful dri­ver of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T, sus­tain­ing trade, ser­vices and thou­sands of liveli­hoods. But it now un­folds amid low head­line in­fla­tion, per­sis­tent cost-of-liv­ing pres­sures, ris­ing house­hold debt and in­tense dig­i­tal com­pe­ti­tion from abroad. The true chal­lenge is to move be­yond a once-a-year spend­ing surge and build a trust­based, dig­i­tal­ly com­pet­i­tive ecosys­tem – one where con­sumers feel gen­uine val­ue and where

the mon­ey spent on sor­rel, ham and gifts con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late at home, strength­en­ing the Trin­bag­on­ian econ­o­my long af­ter Christ­mas has passed.

Kirk Ram­per­sad is mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive and a com­men­ta­tor for the T&T Guardian. He writes on mar­ket­ing trends, con­sumer be­hav­iour, in­no­va­tion and strate­gic growth. Reach him kirkram@hot­mail.com and linkedin.com/in/kirk-ram­per­sad-mba-5ab579268