Rhon­dor Dowlat

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has chal­lenged the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to grow its brands, sup­ply the needs of the coun­try, lean to­wards ex­ports and earn for­eign ex­change.

In the keynote ad­dress at the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent din­ner and awards at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, he ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the sec­tor and "its dri­ving role in the fu­ture pros­per­i­ty of our econ­o­my."

Dr Row­ley not­ed the sec­tor was the third largest con­trib­u­tor to gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) and the sec­ond largest non-pe­tro­le­um con­trib­u­tor.He said since 2000, its out­put has grown from $ 2.1 bil­lion to $6 bil­lion in 2015 adding that around the world the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor helped to dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth and raised liv­ing stan­dards

"A very im­por­tant point to note is that T&T's man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor over­all is a net for­eign ex­change earn­er and there­fore a crit­i­cal pil­lar in sta­bil­is­ing our do­mes­tic econ­o­my," he said.

How­ev­er, he added, over the decades man­u­fac­tur­ers have had to grap­ple with two ma­jor prob­lems: Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the work­force and labour short­ages.

"This is a se­ri­ous prob­lem that can­not sim­ply be ig­nored and rea­soned as a re­flec­tion of our cul­ture and this Gov­ern­ment, through im­proved ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing at all lev­els, is com­mit­ted to chang­ing this," the Prime Min­is­ter said.

"How­ev­er, since the Gov­ern­ment is not a man­u­fac­tur­er it has to be not­ed this is­sue of poor work at­ti­tude and re­sult­ing low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is al­so a man­age­ment is­sue and while the Gov­ern­ment sys­tems may be a nurs­ery for this scourge, pri­vate sec­tor con­tri­bu­tions are not in­signif­i­cant in this mat­ter," he added.He cit­ed the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex 2015-2016 which said poor work eth­ic was the main chal­lenge to do­ing busi­ness in T&T.

Dr Row­ley, who ac­knowl­edged that the do­mes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor had been some­what suc­cess­ful over the years in prod­uct and brand in­no­va­tion, won­dered how many of them were pro­duc­ing and ex­port­ing the same items to­day as they did ten and 20 years ago.

"The sec­ond rel­e­vant ques­tion with re­spect to man­u­fac­tur­ing and the is­sue of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is, are our firms ex­port­ing to the same mar­kets to­day as they were ten and 20 years ago? How have we done with re­spect to en­ter­ing new, even dif­fi­cult mar­kets?" he asked.He said it was up to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to re­ori­ent them­selves and chart a new path for­ward in lead­ing the way and ris­ing above new chal­lenges.

Dr Row­ley said da­ta pro­vid­ed by Ex­porTT showed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 lo­cal firms con­sis­tent­ly ex­port to coun­tries with­in Cari­com and North Amer­i­ca and less than ten firms were ex­port­ing on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to coun­tries with­in Latin Amer­i­ca "where suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have placed sig­nif­i­cant re­sources in ne­go­ti­at­ing trade agree­ments over the last 15 years."

He said T&T had ne­go­ti­at­ed in­no­v­a­tive trade arrange­ments which could pro­vide valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for im­me­di­ate and grow­ing trade ac­cess to a sub­stan­tial mar­ket which had been large­ly ig­nored even though it was just sev­en miles away.

"The cur­rent cir­cum­stances have pushed the mar­ket to­wards us more than we have reached out to ex­plore.

"The Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela has of­fered to put up a re­volv­ing fund of US$50 mil­lion to fa­cil­i­tate the pur­chase of a spe­cif­ic list of Trinidad and To­ba­go man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts," he said.

Fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's ad­dress, TTMA pres­i­dent, Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in, urged man­u­fac­tur­ers to ex­pand in near­by mas­sive mar­kets, in­clud­ing Cu­ba, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Pana­ma and Venezuela.

"In the big­ger one right next door, Venezue­lans are in need of man­u­fac­tured goods in vol­umes which most of us will find un­think­able.

"The op­por­tu­ni­ties are there and they are work­ing with the agen­cies of gov­ern­ment to make them as ac­ces­si­ble to you," he said.

Giv­en ex­am­ples of what could be achieved in Venezuela, Dr Bal­go­b­in said t they were in need of 5.6 mil­lion units of toi­let soap, five mil­lion ce­ment bags, a few thou­sand tonnes of may­on­naise and 18,000 tonnes of flour a month to start.

"That is the scale of the op­por­tu­ni­ty that is sit­ting right next door. We have an op­por­tu­ni­ty now to go out there to bring more ex­cit­ing projects for­ward," he added.

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­er's As­so­ci­a­tion award re­cip­i­ents:

�2 Spe­cial Life­time Achieve­ment Award: Dr Aleem Mo­hammed, S M Jaleel & Co.

�2 In­no­va­tor of the Year 2016: Sacha Cos­met­ics.

Most suc­cess­ful new mar­ket en­trants:

�2 Medi­um: Shaz­am En­ter­pris­es and In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed.

�2 Large:RHS Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed.

Man­u­fac­tur­er of the Year 2016:

�2 Small: West­ern In­dus­tri­al So­lu­tions Lim­it­ed.

�2 Medi­um: Life­time So­lu­tions.

�2 Large: Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed.