Busi­ness own­ers across Ch­agua­nas are paint­ing a stark pic­ture of an econ­o­my un­der pres­sure, with many re­port­ing falling sales, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs and con­sumers cut­ting back on spend­ing as they strug­gle to cope with the high­er cost of liv­ing.

A Busi­ness Guardian sur­vey of busi­ness­es on June 24 found few en­tre­pre­neurs will­ing to de­scribe con­di­tions as im­prov­ing.  

While ex­pe­ri­ences dif­fered across sec­tors, the over­whelm­ing sen­ti­ment was that cus­tomers have be­come more cau­tious, busi­ness­es are de­lay­ing ex­pan­sion and in­fla­tion con­tin­ues to squeeze both mer­chants and con­sumers.

Many al­so ex­pressed hope that mea­sures an­nounced dur­ing last month’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view would even­tu­al­ly pro­vide re­lief, al­though sev­er­al ques­tioned whether the ad­di­tion­al spend­ing would fil­ter down to small busi­ness­es.

For An­nie Estra­da, fran­chise own­er of Donut Boys, sur­viv­ing has be­come the pri­or­i­ty.
“It used to be a lit­tle bet­ter, but now busi­ness is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. Every day you come here, you might look for a sale, but what you used to look out for, you can­not get. You have to re­al­ly fight,” she said.

Estra­da de­scribed an econ­o­my where dis­cre­tionary spend­ing has all but dried up, as cus­tomers pri­ori­tise ne­ces­si­ties over treats.

“Peo­ple are not re­al­ly buy­ing. Every­thing is mon­ey, and the econ­o­my is very hard. To spend a dol­lar now, they pre­fer to bring out some­thing for them to eat to save that dol­lar. It is very, very hard, but we’re try­ing to fight it as much as we can.”

Clos­ing the busi­ness, she in­sist­ed, is not an op­tion.

“They can’t close the door. You don’t want to be one of them that have to close the gates, but you have to sur­vive from what­ev­er you make.”

Her busi­ness has seen a dra­mat­ic de­cline in sales over the past year.

“Sales dropped more than 50 per cent,” Estra­da dis­closed, adding that the slow­down has made every in­vest­ment de­ci­sion more dif­fi­cult.

“You have to think very hard about in­vest­ing in any­thing...be­cause you don’t want things sit­ting down there. Peo­ple are ba­si­cal­ly mov­ing, they’re look­ing for cheap­er things.”

She al­so point­ed to es­ca­lat­ing prices across al­most every cat­e­go­ry of goods. “Very high, very high. Every­thing: soft drink; food­stuff; bread; every­thing went up. Even a dol­lar is a lot, and we’re feel­ing it.”

The weak sales en­vi­ron­ment has al­so forced the busi­ness to freeze hir­ing.

“Right now you don’t need to hire work­ers be­cause it’s very hard to pay a salary,” she ex­plained.

Asked about the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, Estra­da re­served judg­ment.

“I don’t think that bud­get was very much of a bud­get, but every­body is say­ing you just have to wait to see what the out­come of it is. It’s an ear­ly start, so prob­a­bly lat­er on it will be bet­ter.”

Her biggest plea to the gov­ern­ment cen­tred on af­ford­abil­i­ty.

“Food items are num­ber one. They need to work on that. Peo­ple are very much scream­ing for food. There are many poor peo­ple. They can’t af­ford food.”
She al­so called for more em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and ac­tion to tack­le ris­ing trans­port costs.

Ris­ing costs,

shrink­ing mar­gins

At Pie­man Food De­lights, own­er Jes­si­ca Fran­cis Lar­que re­port­ed a sim­i­lar trend.
“It dropped dras­ti­cal­ly. It’s no longer like be­fore,” she said of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty. Sales, she es­ti­mat­ed, are down by about 40 per cent com­pared with last year. There are days that it is good and days that it is slow­er than oth­er days.”

Un­like some busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, Lar­que said crime has not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed her op­er­a­tions.
“Crime doesn’t af­fect me be­cause I just be out here all sev­en, some­times eight, try­ing to make a lit­tle more.”

She cred­it­ed mi­grant cus­tomers for help­ing busi­ness af­ter they first ar­rived in T&T, but not­ed that de­mand has since soft­ened.

Al­though she has col­lect­ed ap­pli­ca­tions from prospec­tive em­ploy­ees, Lar­que has no im­me­di­ate plans to re­cruit.

“I’m watch­ing how it’s go­ing.”

She be­lieves cre­at­ing more jobs would do more to stim­u­late busi­ness than al­most any oth­er mea­sure.

“When it had more jobs, peo­ple in more dif­fer­ent places work­ing, they will come in the morn­ing to pa­tro­n­ise us.”

Not every busi­ness own­er re­port­ed a se­vere de­cline.

Hair­dress­er Melee­ka Elias, own­er of Crown by Meeks, de­scribed trad­ing con­di­tions as rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble de­spite pe­ri­od­ic slow days. “It’s been a bit slow this year, but it’s been good. It’s been good com­pared to last year. It’s the same thing ba­si­cal­ly. It has the slow days, it has the fast days.”

She ac­knowl­edged ris­ing prices for sa­lon prod­ucts but said her busi­ness mod­el has soft­ened the im­pact be­cause clients pur­chase many of the prod­ucts used dur­ing ap­point­ments.

“Some­times the prices fluc­tu­ate and go up... but my clients have to come with their prod­uct so it doesn’t re­al­ly both­er me.”

Look­ing ahead, Elias be­lieves greater fi­nan­cial sup­port for small busi­ness­es could en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

“They could prob­a­bly do grants to help small busi­ness­es to start off.”

Crime, she added, re­mains a na­tion­al con­cern even if it has not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed her busi­ness.
“Every­where in Trinidad the crime sit­u­a­tion is bad.”

A sim­i­lar out­look came from Faith Macken­zie, own­er of Nails by Win­ni­ka, who said her busi­ness con­tin­ues to ben­e­fit from Ch­agua­nas’ steady pedes­tri­an traf­fic.

“This year and last year were ac­tu­al­ly good. I can’t com­plain, to be hon­est.”

She cred­it­ed both ap­point­ments and walk-in cus­tomers for main­tain­ing steady busi­ness.
“You have a lot of walk­ing cus­tomers so I re­al­ly can’t com­plain.”

Her biggest chal­lenge has been the ris­ing cost of sup­plies.

“Prod­ucts are ex­pen­sive to buy. Very, very ex­pen­sive.”

Those high­er costs have in­evitably been passed on to cus­tomers.
“Some peo­ple will be com­plain­ing based on the prices that they will have to pay. But they don’t know how much mon­ey we have to spend to buy prod­ucts be­cause prices re­al­ly raise.”

Macken­zie would al­so like to see gov­ern­ment-backed fi­nanc­ing for emerg­ing en­tre­pre­neurs.

“They could re­al­ly try and of­fer lit­tle loans to young busi­ness peo­ple com­ing up to help them up­lift them­selves.”

Costs keep climb­ing

The im­pact of the slow­ing econ­o­my is al­so be­ing felt be­yond food and per­son­al care busi­ness­es.

At See Vu Op­ti­cal, op­tometrist Aliyah Khan said pa­tient num­bers have be­come no­tice­ably less con­sis­tent than they were a year ago.

“We ac­tu­al­ly checked it from June 2025 to now. It’s def­i­nite­ly slowed down.”

While the branch con­tin­ues to per­form rel­a­tive­ly well be­cause of its lo­ca­tion, Khan said spend­ing pat­terns have shift­ed.

“We’re see­ing slight­ly less, but the flow is not as steady. There would be days when we do see a low­er vol­ume and then days when we do see a high­er vol­ume ver­sus a steady high vol­ume through­out, which is what we would have been see­ing last year.”

She iden­ti­fied the broad­er econ­o­my and for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty as the in­dus­try’s biggest chal­lenges.

“The for­eign ex­change is a big is­sue in terms of sup­pli­ers bring­ing in frames.”

De­spite those chal­lenges, she said the com­pa­ny has man­aged to main­tain stock lev­els through care­ful sourc­ing.

Khan al­so ques­tioned whether mea­sures out­lined in the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view would be enough to sta­bilise the econ­o­my.

“I do re­al­ly think that the mea­sures are quite fair and I don’t know how much it re­al­ly is go­ing to aid in fix­ing the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion mov­ing for­ward. I do hope though that they have a strat­e­gy.”

For some re­tail­ers, the biggest con­cern is no longer sim­ply at­tract­ing cus­tomers but stay­ing afloat in an in­creas­ing­ly un­cer­tain en­vi­ron­ment.

The man­ag­er of Sace Ex­clu­sive Brands, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Mr Nice, be­lieves busi­ness con­di­tions have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed no­tice­ably over the past year.

“Things are a lit­tle bad. At the mo­ment, things are bad. But we have to hold on be­cause we have peo­ple to feed. We have fam­i­ly. We have to eat as well,” he said.

The cloth­ing re­tail­er has been op­er­at­ing in Ch­agua­nas for a decade and has no plans to close de­spite the slow­down.

“You can’t give up. It has been worse. You can’t get worse if you give up. You have to have faith and hope for bet­ter,” he re­marked.

Asked whether busi­ness had im­proved since last year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, he was blunt.

“I’ll say it’ll get worse. A blind man can see, and a deaf man can hear that the place gets worse.”

He said tra­di­tion­al shop­ping pat­terns have al­so dis­ap­peared.

“There is no week­end again. Long time peo­ple used to wait for month-end or the week­end to catch a good sale. Now peo­ple spend on gro­ceries. They for­get about clothes.”

The store is not hir­ing, and he ques­tioned whether ad­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment spend­ing an­nounced dur­ing the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view would ben­e­fit or­di­nary cit­i­zens.
“Who ben­e­fits from it? Me, you or them? The peo­ple on the ground are not go­ing to ben­e­fit.”
His pre­scrip­tion for im­prov­ing busi­ness was sim­ple.
“They have to boil it down to the peo­ple on the ground. Mon­ey has to reach the ground for peo­ple to spend be­cause if peo­ple don’t spend, how will busi­ness­es keep afloat?”
Crime, he added, af­fects every­one.

Dif­fi­cult to pass on high­er costs

Food ven­dor John­ny Fer­nan­do, own­er of Orig­i­nal Hot Mouth Chow, echoed con­cerns about de­clin­ing con­sumer spend­ing.

“This year is def­i­nite­ly not one of the bet­ter years. Last year was def­i­nite­ly bet­ter,” he said.

Fer­nan­do es­ti­mat­ed sales have fall­en by at least 30 per cent.

“Prod­uct costs have gone up,” he high­light­ed, ex­plain­ing that even sup­pli­ers sell­ing di­rect­ly from their homes have in­creased prices.

Rather than pass those in­creas­es di­rect­ly to cus­tomers, he has tried to ab­sorb as much of the high­er costs as pos­si­ble.
“It’s dif­fi­cult to trans­fer the cost on­to the cus­tomer be­cause of the type of prod­uct I sell.”

Fer­nan­do be­lieves crime re­mains one of the biggest ob­sta­cles fac­ing small busi­ness­es.

“Cen­tral on a whole has been se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed for a while now, prob­a­bly es­pe­cial­ly with­in the last five years. A lot of break-ins, ex­tor­tion, rob­beries. It has def­i­nite­ly af­fect­ed.”

Al­though he has nev­er been robbed, he knows many busi­ness own­ers who have.

“Thank­ful­ly, by the grace of God, no, but I know a lot of peo­ple who have.”
Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty should be the gov­ern­ment’s first pri­or­i­ty, he ar­gued.

“Once you see about na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, then you can prob­a­bly see things like us get­ting things for a less­er price.”
He al­so be­lieves the gov­ern­ment should ex­plore mea­sures that could low­er food costs.

“There are things like re­duc­ing cer­tain ship­ping tax­es that could af­fect, in a pos­i­tive way, the cost of those things.”
In the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, Fer­nan­do said the ad­di­tion­al spend­ing can on­ly be judged by how it is used.

“Get­ting more mon­ey could al­ways help the coun­try. It just de­pends on how you man­age it and how you use it.”

Mixed out­look

Not every en­tre­pre­neur in­ter­viewed shared the same pes­simism.

Shiv­ani Ra­moutar of Shelly’s Good­ies Va­ri­ety Store, which has been op­er­at­ing for about sev­en months, de­scribed Christ­mas trad­ing as en­cour­ag­ing and said busi­ness has set­tled in­to a pre­dictable rhythm.

“Af­ter Christ­mas for every­body every­thing slowed down a lit­tle bit, but we’re pick­ing up. We have cus­tomers and busi­ness is go­ing good,” she said.
She al­so in­di­cat­ed that crime has not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed the store.
“I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t say it has a prob­lem with busi­ness.”

At EMD Spa and Hair Sa­lon, own­er Marcela Ocoro, who is from Venezuela, said com­pe­ti­tion has be­come one of her biggest chal­lenges.
“Some­times good, some­times busy, some­times not busy,” she said when asked about busi­ness con­di­tions.

She be­lieves cus­tomer traf­fic has fall­en com­pared with last year be­cause “it has too much com­pe­ti­tion.”

Ocoro, who has lived in T&T for 18 years, said the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

“When I came to this coun­try, it was not like that. But right now peo­ple can’t go out­side be­cause peo­ple are afraid.”

She urged the gov­ern­ment to take stronger ac­tion to im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.