An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Nestlé’s de­ci­sion to ex­plore the sale of its dairy and juices busi­ness has ig­nit­ed a fresh po­lit­i­cal bat­tle over the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, with the Gov­ern­ment in­sist­ing that in­vestor con­fi­dence is ris­ing, while the Op­po­si­tion ar­gues that re­cent poli­cies are mak­ing the coun­try less com­pet­i­tive.

Last week, dur­ing a meet­ing with staff, Nestlé in­formed em­ploy­ees it had be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its Trinidad and To­ba­go op­er­a­tions as part of a wider glob­al re­struc­tur­ing and was ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its dairy and juices busi­ness. More than 200 work­ers are em­ployed at the com­pa­ny’s fa­cil­i­ty on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, Val­sayn.

The de­vel­op­ment dom­i­nat­ed dis­cus­sion yes­ter­day as Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning of­fered sharply con­trast­ing as­sess­ments of the coun­try’s in­vest­ment cli­mate.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya, Ma­haraj re­ject­ed claims that Gov­ern­ment poli­cies, in­clud­ing high­er com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty rates, were un­der­min­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“It’s a re­al world. It’s a cost of do­ing busi­ness, but every­body has to be com­pet­i­tive. Fac­tor every­thing. There are ways to re­duce costs. If some costs go up, you re­duce oth­er costs by ef­fi­cien­cy and lever­ag­ing AI and dig­i­tal plat­forms,” he said.

On the Nestlé re­struc­tur­ing, Ma­haraj main­tained the move re­flect­ed the com­pa­ny’s glob­al strat­e­gy rather than con­di­tions in T&T.

“Com­pa­nies make de­ci­sions. It’s not the first coun­try. Nestlé is re­struc­tur­ing its busi­ness and fo­cus­ing on oth­er ar­eas, but it’s not clos­ing on any­thing. They are sell­ing it, and I’m hop­ing that our lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and busi­ness peo­ple will step up and fill that gap,” he said.

Ma­haraj ar­gued that chang­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions have cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T to ex­pand be­yond tra­di­tion­al ex­port mar­kets.

“The whole world has changed. There’s a new world eco­nom­ic or­der. We have to deal with that, but it has cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he said.

He point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to strength­en trade links with Africa through Ghana, de­scrib­ing the ini­tia­tive as po­ten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tive for the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

“We are fo­cus­ing on open­ing new mar­kets for our man­u­fac­tur­ers and for vis­i­tors com­ing in by look­ing at in­au­gur­al flights to Ghana and open­ing the East and West with T&T as a transat­lantic coun­try,” Ma­haraj said.

He al­so cit­ed the re­cent­ly signed Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Ghana and the Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment with Chile as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­port strat­e­gy.

De­spite con­cerns raised in re­cent weeks about the in­vest­ment cli­mate, Ma­haraj in­sist­ed busi­ness con­fi­dence was strength­en­ing.

“In­vestor con­fi­dence has gone through the roof. Every­body is seek­ing to ex­pand. Every­body un­der­stands that the days of re­ly­ing on one in­dus­try are over,” he said.

Ma­haraj said man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tin­ue to re­ceive pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to for­eign ex­change through Ex­im­bank and urged com­mer­cial banks to do the same.

“Once you’re a man­u­fac­tur­er, you have pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to the Ex­im Bank for forex. I’m go­ing to en­cour­age the com­mer­cial banks to al­so give lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to forex over im­porters be­cause the man­u­fac­tur­ers cre­ate eco­nom­ic val­ue far more than im­porters,” he said.

He added that com­pa­nies were re­port­ing stronger ex­port per­for­mance and in­creas­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in over­seas trade mis­sions.

“Com­pa­nies are telling me they’re up 50 per cent. The last trade mis­sion to Guyana and Suri­name had 64 peo­ple. You would strug­gle to get 20 be­fore. Now they’re flood­ing it,” Ma­haraj said.

Man­ning, how­ev­er, said the Nestlé re­struc­tur­ing should serve as a warn­ing about the im­pact of Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy on man­u­fac­tur­ers.

He said the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion had cre­at­ed un­cer­tain­ty for about 60 dairy farm­ers who sup­plied fresh milk to Nestlé and de­pend­ed on the busi­ness.

“The T&T gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed a hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment for man­u­fac­tur­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Man­ning said.

He ar­gued that man­u­fac­tur­ers had been hit by the re­moval of pref­er­en­tial for­eign ex­change ac­cess, high­er com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty charges, in­creased Cus­toms du­ties on con­tain­ers, tax­es af­fect­ing sin­gle-use plas­tics and oth­er mea­sures that had sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased op­er­at­ing costs.

“The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is an en­er­gy-in­ten­sive busi­ness. One of its high­est costs would be elec­tric­i­ty,” Man­ning said, adding that T&T’s his­tor­i­cal­ly low-cost elec­tric­i­ty had long been one of its strongest com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages.

He al­so point­ed to a 13.7 per cent de­cline in man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ports in 2025, warn­ing that ris­ing do­mes­tic costs were weak­en­ing the sec­tor just as Gov­ern­ment sought to ex­pand ex­port mar­kets.

“We are ask­ing them to please re­view what they have done. They are harm­ing T&T,” Man­ning added.