Sean Nero

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon is con­cerned about a slow­down in T&T's man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor just when the na­tion's cham­pi­on rev­enue earn­ers, oil and gas, are in a state of de­pres­sion.

In her ad­dress at Mon­day's launch of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­er's As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTMA) Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion at the Court­yard by Mar­riott Ho­tel, the min­is­ter said the sec­tor, which was sup­posed to be the sec­ond high­est earn­er in terms of GDP af­ter en­er­gy, was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges.

"The sec­tor is now ac­count­ing for on­ly 8.1 per cent of GDP and though the sec­tor is pro­ject­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence mod­est growth of 1.3 per cent in 2015, this is dri­ven by ex­pan­sion on­ly in the food and bev­er­age and print­ing sub­sec­tors. All oth­er sub-sec­tors are pro­ject­ed to de­cline. There is there­fore no doubt that the pri­vate sec­tor and the gov­ern­ment must now col­lab­o­rate more than ever to dri­ve the ex­pan­sion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor," she said.

Gopee-Scoon said Gov­ern­ment was al­so con­cerned about T&T ranked 88th out of 189 coun­tries in the 2016 Do­ing Busi­ness Re­port and 89th in the 2015/2015 Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port. She said de­ci­sive ac­tion had been tak­en to deal with one of the top is­sues con­sis­tent­ly been iden­ti­fied by the pri­vate sec­tor as an im­ped­i­ment to its con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my–ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

"In this re­gard, we ap­pre­ci­ate the sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by the TTMA in its re­cent state­ment on the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to en­sure the Cen­tral Bank's re­ver­sion of the pre-April 2014 sys­tem of for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion," she said

Gopee-Scoon said the trade min­istry was ac­tive­ly work­ing with the World Bank Group to ex­pand ac­cess to cred­it by im­ple­ment­ing a Se­cured Trans­ac­tions and Col­lat­er­al Reg­istry (STCR) Sys­tem from which lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers could ben­e­fit. She ex­plained it is a le­gal and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate use of mov­able prop­er­ty as col­lat­er­al for busi­ness and con­sumer cred­it.

The min­is­ter added that re­form was nec­es­sary be­cause of a sig­nif­i­cant gap be­tween cred­it sought by busi­ness­es–par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es–and what could be ob­tained through fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

"It is our hope that over the next 18 months, we will have the le­gal frame­work in place for the STCR which will un­leash a new wave of fi­nanc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for your mem­bers to be able to ex­pand their op­er­a­tions," she said.

"While your mem­bers are able to ac­cess the cred­it to ex­pand their op­er­a­tions, the chal­lenge will be to pen­e­trate new mar­kets. Our com­pa­nies must move pro­gres­sive­ly be­yond the Cari­com mar­kets.

"Based on da­ta sup­plied by Ex­porTT, we have dis­cerned that there are over 200 do­mes­tic firms ex­port­ing to Cari­com, while less than 20 cur­rent­ly ex­port to Latin Amer­i­ca. This is in­deed wor­ri­some, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause of the ef­forts made in re­cent years to ne­go­ti­ate trade agree­ments with Cu­ba, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Colom­bia, Venezuela, Pana­ma, Guatemala and El Sal­vador," the min­is­ter said.