Hid­den with­in T&T’s econ­o­my is an es­ti­mat­ed US$2.8 bil­lion in ex­port po­ten­tial, a fig­ure that un­der­scores both the coun­try’s un­tapped strengths and the grow­ing ur­gency of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian ahead of to­day’s an­nu­al Pres­i­dent’s Din­ner host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), Pamela Coke-Hamil­ton, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC), said the agency’s lat­est analy­sis es­ti­mates that T&T could have US$2.8 bil­lion in un­re­alised ex­port po­ten­tial by 2031, ex­clud­ing fos­sil fu­els.

She not­ed the sec­tors with the great­est un­re­alised ex­port po­ten­tial for T&T in com­ing years are:

• Chem­i­cals (US$1.5 bil­lion), in par­tic­u­lar fer­tilis­ers or fer­tilis­er-re­lat­ed prod­ucts in­clud­ing an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, mix­tures of urea and am­mo­ni­um ni­trate, and urea;

• Processed food and an­i­mal feed (US$361 mil­lion), in par­tic­u­lar pre-cooked and pre­pared grains, prepa­ra­tions for sauces and pre­pared sauces, sweet bis­cuits, bread and pas­tries, ketchup and toma­to sauces; and

• Bev­er­ages (US$302 mil­lion), in par­tic­u­lar sweet­ened wa­ter, oth­er non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages, beer made from malt and mix­tures of fruit and veg­etable juices.

The in­sight comes at a crit­i­cal time for the coun­try as it seeks to re­duce its de­pen­dence on oil and gas rev­enues and cre­ate new sources of eco­nom­ic growth.

For Coke-Hamil­ton, how­ev­er, the sig­nif­i­cance of the fig­ure ex­tends far be­yond ex­port earn­ings.

Rather, it points to the op­por­tu­ni­ty for this coun­try to strength­en its re­silience in an in­creas­ing­ly volatile glob­al econ­o­my while cre­at­ing jobs, at­tract­ing in­vest­ment and build­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive in­dus­tries.

“The key word is di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” Coke-Hamil­ton said, ar­gu­ing that coun­tries that broad­en their pro­duc­tive base and ex­pand in­to new mar­kets are bet­ter po­si­tioned to with­stand shocks and cap­i­talise on emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Her per­spec­tive is in­formed by decades spent work­ing at the in­ter­sec­tion of trade, de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. Be­fore tak­ing the helm of the Gene­va-based ITC, Coke-Hamil­ton served as di­rec­tor of the Di­vi­sion on In­ter­na­tion­al Trade and Com­modi­ties at UNC­TAD, where she worked with gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es across Africa, the Caribbean and the Pa­cif­ic to strength­en trade ca­pac­i­ty and im­prove mar­ket ac­cess.

Those ex­pe­ri­ences, she said, have re­in­forced the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing that small economies, such as T&T, re­main ag­ile and out­ward-look­ing at a time when glob­al sup­ply chains are un­der­go­ing pro­found change.

Chang­ing world cre­ates new op­por­tu­ni­ties

For Coke-Hamil­ton, the cur­rent pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty in in­ter­na­tion­al trade should not be viewed sole­ly as a threat. In­stead, it presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for coun­tries such as T&T to repo­si­tion them­selves with­in emerg­ing glob­al val­ue chains and iden­ti­fy new av­enues for growth.

“The world is chang­ing very rapid­ly,” she said, adding, “Glob­al trade pat­terns are chang­ing, sup­ply chains are chang­ing, and coun­tries that are pre­pared and ag­ile would find op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in that change.”

She not­ed that busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments could no longer re­ly on tra­di­tion­al re­la­tion­ships and es­tab­lished mar­kets. In­stead, they must be will­ing to ex­plore new part­ner­ships, in­vest in com­pet­i­tive­ness and adapt to evolv­ing con­sumer and in­dus­try de­mands.

Part of that adap­ta­tion, she said, re­quires look­ing be­yond the coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al trad­ing part­ners.

Africa is one re­gion she be­lieves of­fers sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties for Caribbean ex­porters.

As economies across the con­ti­nent con­tin­ue to ex­pand and in­tra-African trade grows, op­por­tu­ni­ties are emerg­ing for com­pa­nies able to form new com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships and par­tic­i­pate in de­vel­op­ing val­ue chains.

“There are op­por­tu­ni­ties in Africa that have not been ful­ly ex­plored by Caribbean busi­ness­es,” she said, not­ing that com­pa­nies should be look­ing at both ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties and sourc­ing re­la­tion­ships that could strength­en re­gion­al pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

T&T, she not­ed, al­ready has ex­am­ples of suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al in­te­gra­tion.

The coun­try’s am­mo­nia ex­ports to Mo­roc­co sup­port fer­tilis­er pro­duc­tion and demon­strate how Caribbean busi­ness­es can be­come im­por­tant par­tic­i­pants in glob­al in­dus­tri­al net­works.

Build­ing on ex­ist­ing strengths

The ITC’s analy­sis sug­gests T&T is not start­ing from scratch as ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, nu­traceu­ti­cals, soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices and cre­ative in­dus­tries.

For Coke-Hamil­ton, the find­ings demon­strate that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion should not be viewed as aban­don­ing ex­ist­ing strengths but rather build­ing on ca­pa­bil­i­ties that al­ready ex­ist.

“We have a ten­den­cy to think that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion means mov­ing in­to com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ar­eas,” she said. “A lot of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ac­tu­al­ly comes from build­ing on what you al­ready do well and find­ing new mar­kets and new ap­pli­ca­tions.”

That per­spec­tive has been shaped by a ca­reer span­ning more than three decades in in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

A Ja­maica-born trade lawyer, Coke-Hamil­ton was ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the ITC by UN sec­re­tary gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res in 2020. Since then, she has cham­pi­oned the view that trade is not mere­ly about sta­tis­tics or mar­ket ac­cess but about cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple and en­sur­ing that de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al econ­o­my.

Her ca­reer has al­so in­clud­ed se­nior po­si­tions at the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, and the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency, where she helped re­gion­al busi­ness­es in­crease ex­ports and at­tract in­vest­ment

Caribbean must trade more with it­self

While much at­ten­tion is fo­cused on ex­pand­ing ex­ports out­side the re­gion, Coke-Hamil­ton be­lieves one of the Caribbean’s great­est un­tapped op­por­tu­ni­ties re­mains re­gion­al trade.

De­spite decades of ef­forts to deep­en eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion through Cari­com, busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges mov­ing goods across the re­gion be­cause of trans­porta­tion con­straints, high ship­ping costs and lo­gis­ti­cal in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

“Cari­com has es­tab­lished a strong frame­work to fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of goods and ser­vices, but busi­ness­es still face ob­sta­cles such as high trans­port costs, com­plex cus­toms pro­ce­dures, reg­u­la­to­ry dif­fer­ences and lim­it­ed lo­gis­tics con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The chal­lenge now is to trans­late re­gion­al agree­ments in­to prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits for busi­ness­es – down to the last mile – to make trad­ing with­in the re­gion eas­i­er, faster and less cost­ly,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to ITC es­ti­mates, T&T has ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$361 mil­lion in un­re­alised ex­port po­ten­tial with­in Cari­com mar­kets alone ex­clud­ing fos­sil fu­els.

Coke-Hamil­ton fur­ther out­lined that over half of that un­re­alised ex­port po­ten­tial with­in Cari­com is in the fol­low­ing prod­ucts: sweet­ened wa­ter (US$68 mil­lion), Port­land ce­ment (US$29 mil­lion), pre-cooked and pre­pared grains (US$26 mil­lion), urea (US$19 mil­lion), prepa­ra­tions for sauces and pre­pared sauces (US$18 mil­lion), glass con­tain­ers for con­veyance/pack­ag­ing of goods (US$17 mil­lion), and mix­tures of fruits/veg­eta­bles juices (US$14 mil­lion).

In terms of mar­kets, she said over two thirds of the un­re­alised po­ten­tial is in the fol­low­ing three mar­kets: Guyana (US$140 mil­lion), Ja­maica (US$62 mil­lion) and Suri­name (US$53 mil­lion).

Yet re­gion­al busi­ness­es of­ten face sit­u­a­tions where it is eas­i­er to ship prod­ucts to North Amer­i­ca or Eu­rope than to neigh­bour­ing Caribbean coun­tries.

For Coke-Hamil­ton, im­prov­ing ship­ping net­works, stream­lin­ing cus­toms pro­ce­dures and strength­en­ing lo­gis­tics in­fra­struc­ture must be­come pri­or­i­ties if the re­gion hopes to un­lock its full eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial.

“Con­nec­tiv­i­ty is ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal,” she said. “With­out con­nec­tiv­i­ty, you sim­ply can­not build strong re­gion­al val­ue chains.”

Com­pet­ing through dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion

As small economies, Caribbean coun­tries are un­like­ly to win glob­al mar­ket share through vol­ume alone.

In­stead, Coke-Hamil­ton ar­gued that the re­gion’s ad­van­tage lies in its abil­i­ty to pro­duce unique, high-val­ue prod­ucts and ser­vices.

“The an­swer is dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, not scale,” she said adding, “The Caribbean has as­sets that larg­er com­peti­tors can­not eas­i­ly repli­cate, in­clud­ing dis­tinc­tive cul­tures, pre­mi­um agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, bio­di­ver­si­ty, cre­ative in­dus­tries and com­pelling brand sto­ries.”

She point­ed to Ja­maica’s suc­cess­ful brand­ing of prod­ucts such as Blue Moun­tain cof­fee and the glob­al recog­ni­tion of its mu­sic and cul­ture as ex­am­ples of how coun­tries can cre­ate val­ue from their dis­tinc­tive as­sets.

For T&T, op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist in pre­mi­um food prod­ucts, spe­cialised man­u­fac­tur­ing, cul­tur­al and cre­ative in­dus­tries, soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and dig­i­tal ser­vices.

The coun­try’s glob­al­ly recog­nised Car­ni­val brand al­so has po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al ex­port earn­ings through in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, events and re­lat­ed ser­vices.

Emerg­ing sec­tors linked to the blue econ­o­my, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial com­mer­cial ap­pli­ca­tions for sar­gas­sum sea­weed, of­fer ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­no­va­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty now a busi­ness re­quire­ment

An­oth­er ma­jor shift shap­ing glob­al trade is the grow­ing im­por­tance of en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) stan­dards.

Ac­cord­ing to the ITC, many firms across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean still op­er­ate with in­for­mal sus­tain­abil­i­ty sys­tems and lim­it­ed re­port­ing frame­works.

As in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers and in­vestors place greater em­pha­sis on trans­paren­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, busi­ness­es that fail to adapt may find them­selves at a dis­ad­van­tage.

She not­ed that com­pa­nies that suc­cess­ful­ly in­te­grate ESG prac­tices are of­ten bet­ter po­si­tioned to at­tract in­vest­ment, se­cure fi­nanc­ing and ac­cess high­er-val­ue mar­kets.

“The en­cour­ag­ing news is that busi­ness­es in­vest­ing in stronger ESG and due dili­gence sys­tems are see­ing tan­gi­ble re­sults. Through ITC-sup­port­ed pro­grammes, com­pa­nies across the re­gion have im­proved their ESG readi­ness, at­tract­ed new in­vest­ment and gen­er­at­ed more than US$4 mil­lion in ESG-re­lat­ed sales and in­vest­ments be­tween 2025 and 2026,” Coke-Hamil­ton ex­plained.

For T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­porters, that means sus­tain­abil­i­ty must in­creas­ing­ly be­come part of long-term busi­ness plan­ning rather than a com­pli­ance ex­er­cise.

Through­out her ca­reer, Coke-Hamil­ton has ad­vo­cat­ed for en­sur­ing that small and vul­ner­a­ble economies have a mean­ing­ful stake in glob­al trade.

A grad­u­ate of George­town Uni­ver­si­ty and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, she al­so found­ed the Shri­dath Ram­phal Cen­tre and the Mas­ter’s in In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Pol­i­cy pro­gramme at UWI, help­ing to build re­gion­al ex­per­tise in trade pol­i­cy and in­ter­na­tion­al com­merce.

Her con­vic­tion re­mains that small states can suc­ceed in the glob­al econ­o­my if they are pre­pared to in­no­vate, col­lab­o­rate and in­vest strate­gi­cal­ly.