Lever­ag­ing and em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy for small and medi­um-sized (SMEs) en­ter­pris­es will as­sist in gen­er­at­ing new mar­kets to cre­ate for­eign ex­change and al­so job cre­ation.

That’s the view of Caribbean Ex­port’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor De­o­dat Ma­haraj, as he said the Caribbean is falling fur­ther be­hind in terms of trade, as dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is not be­ing em­braced.

He said it is against this back­ground that Caribbean Ex­port, as part of the Eu­ro­pean Union-Latin Amer­i­ca, host­ed the Caribbean (EU-LAC) Dig­i­tal Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gramme in var­i­ous re­gion­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T.

Caribbean Ex­port is the re­gion­al trade and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion agency fo­cused on build­ing a re­silient Caribbean by pro­vid­ing cut­ting-edge and high-im­pact sup­port to the pri­vate sec­tor.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian about the pro­gramme, Ma­haraj out­lined it is aimed at get­ting more lo­cal and Caribbean SMEs in the tech­nol­o­gy space which would al­low them to con­nect with sim­i­lar busi­ness­es in Latin Amer­i­ca in places like Chile, where there are many ac­cel­er­a­tors and start-up en­ti­ties, as he not­ed that such busi­ness­es are at the fore­front.

Shed­ding more light on how the pro­gramme stands to ben­e­fit SMEs, Ma­haraj said fund­ing for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean amounts to Eu­ros $14 mil­lion, which is US$17 mil­lion.

He added that a few busi­ness­es in var­i­ous Caribbean coun­tries would grad­u­ate from the pro­gramme in the next two to three years and would re­ceive be­tween US $30 to 40 mil­lion in­di­vid­u­al­ly to help grow their re­spec­tive busi­ness­es and ex­pand their ex­port mar­kets.

“The fact is we want to iden­ti­fy those who can suc­ceed, and work with them, to team up with oth­er busi­ness­es so they can cre­ate joint ven­tures, grow their busi­ness, and can ac­cess in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

“We cur­rent­ly have work­shops tak­ing place in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ja­maica, and Bar­ba­dos. But this is like the for­ma­tive stage of the pro­gramme, to iden­ti­fy and to get the busi­ness­es on board,” Ma­haraj said.

The ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor said while T&T seems to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion than oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion when it comes to SMEs mov­ing for­ward with dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, there is a need to ac­cel­er­ate this process as he cit­ed that coun­tries such as Chile, Ar­genti­na and Mex­i­co are mak­ing great head­way in terms of dou­bling on ex­ports and en­ter­ing new mar­kets.

In cit­ing an ex­am­ple of how the Ba­hamas has been em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy, Ma­haraj not­ed that coun­try us­es ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to tal­ly how many tourists en­ter that coun­try and the amount earned from them an­nu­al­ly.

“Why are they do­ing that and why are they us­ing tech­nol­o­gy be­cause those are the peo­ple with­in the mar­ket seg­ment, who would have mon­ey to spend at restau­rants, and hire taxis so they use the tech­nol­o­gy to sharp­en their mar­ket­ing fo­cus,” he ex­plained.

It is in this con­text he sug­gest­ed that oth­er Caribbean coun­tries should fol­low suit to help boost their own economies in ei­ther tourism, agri­cul­ture or the gen­er­al busi­ness sec­tor.

Ze­ro­ing on the for­eign ex­change chal­lenges that this coun­try has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, Ma­haraj rec­om­mend­ed that the SME sec­tor ought to fo­cus on lu­cra­tive mar­kets such as Eu­rope.

“How do we ac­cess the op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by that mar­ket? Of­ten­times busi­ness­es are not tap­ping in­to this mar­ket. The sec­ond is­sue is that our peo­ple are not pro­duc­ing on a scale. Take for ex­am­ple, if some­one wants to pur­chase one thou­sand dress­es from a de­sign­er, but the or­der can­not be ful­filled, due to the work­force. So, we have to re­vis­it how our SMEs do busi­ness and give the de­sign to some­body in Chi­na to pro­duce, there­fore for­eign ex­change would be earned eas­i­er,” the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor high­light­ed.

It is about do­ing things out of the tra­di­tion­al mar­kets, he main­tained, that needs to be im­ple­ment­ed to be prof­itable.

There­fore, Ma­haraj em­pha­sised us­ing tech­nol­o­gy in one’s every­day busi­ness op­er­a­tions and mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is im­por­tant.

“When you lever­age tech­nol­o­gy, you can put your prod­uct on a plat­form, such as Ama­zon, where there will be more vis­i­bil­i­ty.  

“Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, farm­ers in Bar­ba­dos start­ed sell­ing their let­tuce on an on­line plat­form, which was ben­e­fi­cial to them. SMEs need to take that bold step and not shy away from the use of tech­nol­o­gy,” he said.

Fur­ther, Ma­haraj not­ed in T&T, 75 per cent of busi­ness­es are mi­cro small and medi­um-scale en­ter­pris­es and ac­count for 70 per cent of to­tal em­ploy­ment and con­tribute be­tween 55 to 60 per cent of the re­gion’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP).  

“If you want to ef­fect change and trans­for­ma­tion, we have to fo­cus on these busi­ness­es to en­sure they have the mon­ey to in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy,” he said.

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to an SME par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ini­tia­tive.

Wen­dell Rae­burn, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Stin­grae Caribbean Ltd, who op­er­ates his seafood head­quar­ters out of Point Lisas, said the key is un­der­stand­ing what tech­nol­o­gy works for one’s com­pa­ny.

“In this par­tic­u­lar case, on the dig­i­tal ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme. The first ques­tion you have to fig­ure out is, what does that mean in the con­text of what your or­gan­i­sa­tion is? What does that mean more com­put­ers, more equip­ment.  

“These are the things that we have from them. It sounds nice, but what does it mean when the rub­ber hits the road,” Rae­burn point­ed out.

As it per­tains to for­eign ex­change, he said the com­pa­ny can nav­i­gate this is­sue as Ex­im­bank- on­ly of­fi­cial ex­port cred­it Agency (ECA) in T&T-pro­vides the forex to as­sist his com­pa­ny in ex­port­ing goods.

“My com­pa­ny aims to be­come a net for­eign earn­er, hence why we are try­ing to ex­pand in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets,” Rae­burn said adding, “Stin­grae Caribbean al­ready ex­ports to Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Grena­da and St Lu­cia.”

He not­ed an­oth­er key fac­tor re­gard­ing ex­port­ing is un­der­stand­ing how a com­pa­ny pack­ages its prod­ucts to dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

“How we call the prod­uct, how we de­scribe the prod­uct, how we mar­ket our prod­uct in an­oth­er coun­try dif­fers from ter­ri­to­ry to ter­ri­to­ry. So, what can work in Bar­ba­dos won’t work in An­tigua what will work in Grena­da will not work in St Lu­cia. Those are things that are at the bot­tom of the learn­ing curves, but op­er­a­tions like Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency, ex­portTT in par­tic­u­lar, un­der­stand the as­sign­ment and have been very help­ful in nav­i­gat­ing some of the chal­lenges. This is part of the learn­ing process,” Rae­burn de­tailed.

In shar­ing some chal­lenges he said prod­ucts must be kept frozen at all times, adding that ship­ping takes sev­er­al hours.

This is­sue, Rae­burn said, was cur­rent­ly be­ing ad­dressed.

“There are a cou­ple of guys com­ing on board who know about ship­ping lo­gis­tics and dif­fer­ent routes that would be use­ful. Be­cause we are re­frig­er­at­ed and frozen, it means we have to send the con­tain­ers right away or we must find dry ice,” Rae­burn added.