Aleem Khan

The trade mis­sion, com­pris­ing 14 Colom­bian ex­porters, last­ed from Ju­ly 9 to 12.They were Ma­made­co, Hig­i­tex, In­dus­trias de Acero, In­du­ma, TopTec, Azem­bla, Coro­na, Casagres, Haceb, Laser SA, Forme­san, For­sa, Rymel, and Casa Blan­ca.They man­u­fac­ture tiles, decks, clay prod­ucts, house­hold ap­pli­ances, build­ing sys­tems, ce­ram­ics and hard­ware prod­ucts.

"The to­tal ex­ports of non-tra­di­tion­al prod­ucts at the end of 2011 to T&T amount­ed to US$51 mil­lion, and that rep­re­sents a 15 per cent in­crease from the pre­vi­ous year," Car­los Gon­za­lez, di­rec­tor of ProEx­port Caribe said dur­ing a trade mis­sion at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad in Port-of-Spain. ProEx­port Colom­bia is the or­gan­i­sa­tion in charge of pro­mot­ing Colom­bia as an in­ter­na­tion­al tourist des­ti­na­tion, at­tract­ing di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment and fos­ter­ing non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports. Non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports for Colom­bia are goods and ser­vices out­side of pe­tro­le­um, coal, green cof­fee and the raw ma­te­ri­als to make iron and steel. These four ex­ports ac­count for "about 50 per cent of Colom­bian ex­ports," Gon­za­lez said. He spoke at the trade mis­sion on Ju­ly 11. "Out of the US$51 mil­lion, US$16 mil­lion came from the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, and out of the US$16 mil­lion, US$2.4 mil­lion were from the sec­tor, for which we have the trade mis­sion right now: the con­struc­tion sec­tor," Gon­za­lez said.

Asked why non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports to T&T in­creased, he said, "The main rea­son was agribusi­ness. The agribusi­ness sec­tor it­self grew 49 per cent. That sec­tor is more dy­nam­ic. We are more com­pet­i­tive in that sec­tor, and we have prod­ucts that are more ac­cept­able now in the Trinidad mar­ket, every­thing that has to do with agribusi­ness, from processed food to per­ish­ables." In Au­gust, ProEx­port will host its third trade mis­sion in Trinidad for 2012, when it brings its top agribusi­ness­es to show­case their prod­ucts and gain new cus­tomers in Port-of-Spain. In May 2012, ProEx­port brought a trade mis­sion with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from its health sec­tor. Since it opened its Port-of-Spain of­fice four years ago, ProEx­port has brought nine trade mis­sions to T&T. This mis­sion will be the first to fo­cus on agribusi­ness. "What we've been do­ing is tak­ing buy­ers to our trade shows in Colom­bia," Gon­za­lez said, "and bring­ing Colom­bian ex­porters to vis­it this mar­ket as well."

Cheap­er trans­port costs

He said there are many ad­van­tages to choos­ing Colom­bia over oth­er coun­tries. "Or­der­ing a con­tain­er from Chi­na takes a cou­ple of months and it costs like US$6,000. Or­der­ing a con­tain­er from Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia, costs US$1,500 and it takes on­ly three to four days. "You can or­der a mixed con­tain­er too. You don't have to bring just one prod­uct. "We have high qual­i­ty stan­dards be­cause our main mar­ket is the Unit­ed States, so we meet all the US stan­dards for man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, we al­so have glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive pric­ing." Be­ing al­so re­spon­si­ble for at­tract­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, Gon­za­lez said Colom­bia is a very at­trac­tive lo­ca­tion for T&T com­pa­nies seek­ing to grow their mar­kets. He said through ProEx­port, T&T com­pa­nies can look in­to open­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion of­fices and even­tu­al­ly fac­to­ries to serve the South Amer­i­can mar­ket. Colom­bia has free-trade agree­ments with al­most all South Amer­i­can coun­tries, Gon­za­lez said. "There are a cou­ple (of T&T com­pa­nies) think­ing about open­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion of­fices in the food sec­tor and al­so in the make­up and per­son­al care (cos­met­ics) sec­tor."

Asked if Sacha Cos­met­ics is one such com­pa­ny, Gon­za­lez said, "Sacha Cos­met­ics is look­ing at hav­ing a dis­tri­b­u­tion op­er­a­tion in Colom­bia. Fifty-one per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is fe­male, and at least half of that pop­u­la­tion are adult fe­males with buy­ing pow­er, so you have a ten mil­lion-per­son mar­ket for cos­met­ics in Colom­bia," he said. The to­tal pop­u­la­tion of Colom­bia is 46.9 mil­lion. On the T&T man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, Gon­za­lez said, "I think we can part­ner with them be­cause we can of­fer them a very good al­ter­na­tive for their con­sum­able goods, raw ma­te­ri­als and se­mi-processed goods as well, be­cause they are get­ting those from third coun­tries and not from Colom­bia. "Al­so, talk­ing about ser­vices be­tween Colom­bia and Trinidad, there is a very nice syn­er­gy be­tween the coun­tries be­cause we sell pe­tro­le­um crude to Trinidad, and Trinidad process­es and re­fines that pe­tro­le­um and we buy gaso­line from Trinidad.

"Last year, it most­ly was gaso­line, but we bought more than US$500 mil­lion. In 2010, we bought about US$350 mil­lion in re­fined pe­tro­le­um," Gon­za­lez said. "Our to­tal ex­ports are twice as much be­cause you bought about US$950 mil­lion in crude oil, and then processed that pe­tro­le­um, and I be­lieve you sold gaso­line to oth­er mar­kets." "We've been com­ing here, bring­ing trade mis­sions to Trinidad for the last nine years since the Caribbean of­fice opened in April 2003," Gon­za­lez said. "From Trinidad, we cov­er T&T, Guyana, Suri­name and Bar­ba­dos." Gon­za­lez said Colom­bia is "very com­mit­ted to the Caribbean and, in par­tic­u­lar, to T&T, and we have the ac­tions to prove it."

Qual­i­ty ad­van­tage

"The ex­pe­ri­ence has been great. I didn't know this was such a great mar­ket. This is our first time here in Trinidad, and there are a lot of com­pa­nies that are very in­ter­est­ed in our prod­ucts, so I be­lieve we are go­ing to start do­ing busi­ness here in Trinidad," said Glo­ria Vil­le­gas, ex­port di­rec­tor, In­dus­trias de Acero, which makes locks. In­dus­trais de Acero has been in ex­is­tence for more than 60 years and has been ex­port­ing to 15 mar­kets, most of them in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. T&T is the com­pa­ny's first Eng­lish-speak­ing ex­port des­ti­na­tion. The com­pa­ny plans to ex­port to North Amer­i­ca soon. David Calle of Coro­na, a tile man­u­fac­tur­er on the trade mis­sion, said, "The ex­pe­ri­ence has been very pos­i­tive. I found the mar­ket is very com­pet­i­tive. I found prod­ucts from Chi­na, from Brazil. It's hard to com­pete, but we have a good ad­van­tage be­cause of the qual­i­ty, be­cause of the ocean freight. "I man­aged to get some busi­ness go­ing. I have to work hard­er to get the or­ders con­firmed, but cus­tomers were very open to us, and were very help­ful, and I think there is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty com­ing to Trinidad."