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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Suppliers on food bail out for Venezuela: Forex issue can pose a problem

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20160525

The on go­ing un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change could ham­per Venezuela's chances of be­ing sup­plied with food items from T&T.

So said pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Dr Yunus Ibra­ham, and CEO of Ari­ma Dis­count Mart (ADM), Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj.

Faced with a food cri­sis, Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, who held bi-lat­er­al talks with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Mon­day, of­fered to pur­chase from T&T US$50 mil­lion in food for its cit­i­zens.

Among the items the neigh­bour­ing coun­try were in­ter­est­ed in were but­ter, chick­en, pork, ketchup, rice and black beans.

While the food would bring much re­lief to thou­sands of Venezue­lan cit­i­zens, Ibrahim said his pri­ma­ry con­cern was how this new arrange­ment would af­fect do­mes­tic sup­ply.

In the last few weeks, Ibrahim said sup­pli­ers had com­plained about the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change which was ham­per­ing their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

"The sup­pli­ers them­selves had is­sues with rais­ing the cap­i­tal with re­spect to the US dol­lar to bring in the raw ma­te­ri­als for the pur­pose of food pro­duc­tion," he added.

Since then, Ibrahim said they have had "some­what of a stop gap mea­sure, an ini­tia­tive through di­rect loans from the Ex­im­Bank arrange­ment. That was for food man­u­fac­tur­ers and im­porters."

With this new arrange­ment, he said Gov­ern­ment would now have to fo­cus its at­ten­tion on sup­pli­ers and im­porters who would sup­ply Venezuela with food.

He said if the forex short­age con­tin­ues, man­u­fac­tur­ers would be un­able to bring in raw ma­te­ri­als.

"If they (man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers) can't re­plen­ish their ware­hous­es be­cause of the non-avail­abil­i­ty (of forex) this could pose a prob­lem."

Al­so speak­ing on the is­sue was Ma­haraj who said sup­pli­ers and man­u­fac­tures had no for­eign ex­change to pay for im­port­ed goods.

"You are go­ing to cre­ate a dent in our for­eign ex­change and our sup­ply of goods. You may be adding fu­el to fire here," he said.

ADM is one of the coun­try's largest im­porter of food.

While Ma­haraj praised T&T for help­ing Venezuela which was in dis­tress, he said: "We can­not get goods to sell be­cause we have no for­eign ex­change. It could have an ef­fect on sup­ply here."

He said the lit­tle food­stuff we have "for our peo­ple" was now be­ing of­fered to Venezuela.

"It just demon­strates that our sup­plies will be short. I think it is some­thing that should be thought of. I have a prob­lem be­cause we don't have enough for lo­cal con­sump­tion," Ma­haraj said.

As the dis­trib­u­tor of the Rain­bow brand, Ma­haraj said for the past year sup­pli­ers had re­duced their im­ports.

"Most im­porters had to cut their im­ports be­cause of the short­age in for­eign ex­change, not for­get­ting the cost of one US dol­lar which is al­most TT$7 now," he added.

To com­pound mat­ters, Ma­haraj said food items, such as peas and beans, have been dif­fi­cult to ob­tain abroad.

Yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Robin Phillip, said the news of Venezuela want­i­ng to buy from T&T was wel­com­ing.

Un­sure of how the arrange­ments would be worked out be­tween the two coun­tries, Phillip said the poul­try in­dus­try was in­ter­est­ed in sup­ply­ing Venezuela with chick­ens.

"We think it is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the poul­try in­dus­try and coun­try to get ac­cess to a mar­ket as large as Venezuela. The poul­try in­dus­try has ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty which Venezuela can tap in­to," he said.

Phillip, who al­so serves as di­rec­tor of mar­ket­ing at Arawak and Com­pa­ny Ltd, said it would take 12 weeks to ramp up their chick­en sup­ply.

T&T con­sumes ap­prox­i­mate­ly one mil­lion heads of chick­en week­ly of which 80 per cent is lo­cal­ly pro­duced with the re­main­ing 20 per cent be­ing im­port­ed.

"We could sup­ply Venezuela with 100,000 chick­en a week. It is not an in­signif­i­cant amount," Phillip added.

He said the poul­try sec­tor would of­fer Venezuela a com­pet­i­tive price for its chick­ens.

Yes­ter­day, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said she was still hav­ing di­a­logue with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials for a con­tin­gent to come to Trinidad to dis­cuss the is­sue fur­ther.

Pres­i­dent of T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in, did not re­spond to a voice mes­sage on his cell­phone yes­ter­day. Sev­er­al calls al­so went unan­swered.


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