An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Even as ma­jor com­pa­nies scale back op­er­a­tions, re­struc­ture, or ex­it parts of do­mes­tic mar­ket, busi­ness­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go say they are not ready to give up on the coun­try.

From small man­u­fac­tur­ers and ar­ti­sans to health­care in­vestors and in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the mes­sage com­ing out of last week’s Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, was that in­vestor con­fi­dence re­mains, but it is be­ing test­ed by per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages, high op­er­at­ing costs, se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and weak con­sumer spend­ing. There were 411 ex­hibitors.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian spoke with busi­ness own­ers and ex­ec­u­tives fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment that Cana­da’s Methanex Cor­po­ra­tion will in­def­i­nite­ly idle its Ti­tan methanol plant at Point Lisas af­ter fail­ing to se­cure a new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny. The in­ter­views al­so came as Nestlé con­tin­ues to re­struc­ture its T&T op­er­a­tions while seek­ing a buy­er for parts of its busi­ness, against the back­drop of sev­er­al lo­cal com­pa­nies shut­ting their doors over the past year.
De­spite those de­vel­op­ments, many busi­ness­es said they re­main com­mit­ted to Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­though ex­pan­sion plans have be­come more mea­sured.

SMEs feel­ing the squeeze

For many small busi­ness­es, con­fi­dence re­mains, but prof­itabil­i­ty has be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult.

Can­dice Williams, own­er of Olivia David Ar­ti­sanal Prod­ucts, said con­sumer spend­ing has slowed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the pan­dem­ic as on­line shop­ping con­tin­ues to draw cus­tomers away from lo­cal ven­dors. The busi­ness makes body prod­ucts.

“When I start­ed my busi­ness, the sales were a lot more. Peo­ple were turn­ing out, peo­ple were spend­ing mon­ey, and sales were good,” she ex­plained. “Now per­sons are turn­ing to­wards shop­ping on Ama­zon, Temu and Shein. They’re not re­al­ly go­ing out to the small mar­kets as much.”

Williams said ex­pan­sion is nec­es­sary for sur­vival, but it car­ries con­sid­er­able risk.
“I can’t af­ford to stay at the same size. I need to be able to grow. It is go­ing to take a lot of ef­fort, and I am hope­ful that with enough ef­fort I will see re­sults. But to say I think it’s guar­an­teed, no.”

She al­so be­lieves many Gov­ern­ment fi­nanc­ing pro­grammes mar­ket­ed to mi­cro busi­ness­es fail to reach the small­est en­tre­pre­neurs.
“I wish that if they are mak­ing small busi­ness loans ac­ces­si­ble to small busi­ness­es, it re­al­ly should be ac­ces­si­ble to small busi­ness­es,” she ar­gued, not­ing that many ar­ti­sans do not own sig­nif­i­cant phys­i­cal as­sets need­ed to sat­is­fy lend­ing re­quire­ments.

Meera Boodram, a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Sunkist Mar­ket­ing, al­so re­mained con­fi­dent about do­ing busi­ness lo­cal­ly de­spite ac­knowl­edg­ing sig­nif­i­cant ob­sta­cles.
“My con­fi­dence has not wa­vered. Every­thing is good at the mo­ment. I don’t see any­thing be­ing dis­rup­tive to our com­pa­ny,” she ob­served.
How­ev­er, she de­scribed ac­cess to for­eign ex­change as one of the biggest bar­ri­ers fac­ing busi­ness­es.

“The ease of do­ing busi­ness is not good at the mo­ment be­cause of the US cur­ren­cy. It’s so dif­fi­cult for us to get that ex­change. It is very dif­fi­cult for us to ex­pand be­cause you need US cur­ren­cy.”

Boodram wants Gov­ern­ment sup­port aimed at help­ing SMEs ac­cess re­gion­al ex­port mar­kets while eas­ing for­eign ex­change con­straints.
A lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said op­er­at­ing costs con­tin­ue to rise as tax­es and trade ex­pens­es squeeze mar­gins.
“We are look­ing to ex­pand. We are look­ing at ex­ports re­al­ly be­cause that helps us to sub­sidise the for­eign ex­change is­sue,” the man­u­fac­tur­er dis­closed.
Ex­port earn­ings, the man­u­fac­tur­er ex­plained, help off­set forex short­ages and re­duce pres­sure from in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion costs.

Calls for a stronger busi­ness cli­mate

For Ca­lyp­so Fla­vors own­er Alas­tai Ramharaq, in­vestor con­fi­dence de­pends on whether long-stand­ing struc­tur­al is­sues are ad­dressed.
He iden­ti­fied crime, ac­cess to for­eign ex­change and un­equal treat­ment be­tween large and small busi­ness­es as key con­cerns.

“Se­cu­ri­ty is num­ber one. Sec­ond is ac­cess to US dol­lars and be­ing able to move mon­ey. We’ve seen a lot of favouritism at very high places to the big com­pa­nies. Small com­pa­nies like my­self find it very hard to ac­cess US dol­lars to bring in raw ma­te­ri­als,” he stat­ed.

While he be­lieves eco­nom­ic cy­cles are in­evitable, Ramharaq ar­gued that the present down­turn has last­ed longer than pre­vi­ous ones.
“The econ­o­my is stay­ing down too long, and the Gov­ern­ment needs to find some type of so­lu­tion.”

His com­pa­ny, which re­lies heav­i­ly on lo­cal in­puts, has man­aged to with­stand the slow­down, but he warned that weak con­sumer pur­chas­ing pow­er threat­ens busi­ness­es across the econ­o­my.

“Peo­ple need to have the pow­er to pur­chase. Once we don’t have the pow­er to pur­chase, then the econ­o­my will al­ways stay down.”

An­oth­er en­tre­pre­neur re­turn­ing from over­seas with re­newed con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go is Richard Ram­jathan, own­er of RBR Ram­jathans and Hik Vi­sion, a re­tail­er of CCTV cam­eras.

Fresh from com­plet­ing the Young Lead­ers of the Amer­i­c­as Ini­tia­tive (YLAI) pro­gramme in the Unit­ed States, Ram­jathan said sev­er­al Amer­i­can com­pa­nies ex­pressed in­ter­est in in­vest­ing in his busi­ness af­ter see­ing its po­ten­tial.

“They are will­ing to work with me here in my lo­cal coun­try and rein­vest in­to my busi­ness,” he shared. “But one of the con­cerns that they are hav­ing is how are they go­ing to get back their cur­ren­cy? If they in­vest US dol­lars in­to my com­pa­ny, how would I be able to gen­er­ate it back in­to the US and give it back to them?”

He said ac­cess to for­eign ex­change re­mains the biggest ob­sta­cle pre­vent­ing over­seas in­vestors from com­mit­ting cap­i­tal de­spite their en­thu­si­asm for Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es.

“They love my brand, they love my prod­uct, they love what I do, but how are they go­ing to get back their cur­ren­cy?”

De­spite that chal­lenge, Ram­jathan said he re­mains con­vinced the coun­try has sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for in­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion.
“I do say that T&T still has po­ten­tial for peo­ple to in­vest back in­to us. We have good tal­ent here, and there are good small busi­ness­es like my­self,” he added.

Like many SMEs, he ac­knowl­edged that the short­age of US cur­ren­cy and re­duc­tions in cred­it card lim­its have made op­er­at­ing a busi­ness more dif­fi­cult. Even so, he has no in­ten­tion of re­lo­cat­ing his en­ter­prise.

The de­ten­tion of Blue Wa­ters ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Do­minic Hadeed dur­ing the State of Emer­gency al­so emerged dur­ing con­ver­sa­tions at TIC.

Three busi­ness own­ers, who de­clined to have ei­ther their names or com­pa­nies pub­lished, said they were un­com­fort­able dis­cussing the is­sue pub­licly be­cause they feared vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

One busi­ness own­er said the case had cre­at­ed un­cer­tain­ty with­in sec­tions of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, while an­oth­er main­tained that busi­ness­peo­ple want­ed re­as­sur­ance that due process and the rule of law would al­ways be up­held.

A third ex­ec­u­tive said many com­pa­nies were de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ing pub­lic com­ment un­til the le­gal process runs its course.

In­vest­ing for the long haul

Is­land In­ter­na­tion­al Hos­pi­tal chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Dar­ryl Har­riper­sad, said his com­pa­ny’s con­fi­dence has not di­min­ished de­spite cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.
Con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin on the spe­cial­ist hos­pi­tal in Aranguez, with the de­vel­op­ment pro­ject­ed to cre­ate be­tween 300 and 500 con­struc­tion jobs over a four-year pe­ri­od be­fore em­ploy­ing hun­dreds more once the fa­cil­i­ty opens in phas­es.

“We have strong in­vestor con­fi­dence,” Har­riper­sad said. “It’s not wa­vered be­cause of the prod­uct that we have, the lo­ca­tion that we have, and the co­op­er­a­tion that we have.”

He ex­plained that the pur­pose-built, 100,000-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty is de­signed to re­duce the num­ber of na­tion­als trav­el­ling over­seas for spe­cialised med­ical pro­ce­dures while at­tract­ing Caribbean pa­tients and T&T med­ical pro­fes­sion­als cur­rent­ly prac­tis­ing abroad.
“Our ac­cred­i­ta­tion and how we are build­ing and de­sign­ing our the­atres cater for them. We are here for the long haul.”

The first phase of the project is ex­pect­ed to open in 2028, while full de­vel­op­ment is pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue un­til 2035.

Al­though ex­pan­sion be­yond the cur­rent project is not be­ing con­sid­ered im­me­di­ate­ly, Har­riper­sad said the scale of the in­vest­ment it­self demon­strates long-term con­fi­dence in the coun­try.

“We have an ear­ly open­ing from 2028, but there are sev­er­al phas­es of that, which will take us un­til 2035. That ex­pan­sion mod­el might be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult right now, but lat­er on it’s pos­si­ble,” he added.

Mex­i­can Am­bas­sador Vic­tor Hugo Morales Melén­dez al­so point­ed to grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est in T&T.
Lead­ing a del­e­ga­tion of Mex­i­can com­pa­nies to TIC, he said firms in­volved in food prod­ucts, house­hold ap­pli­ances and bev­er­ages were ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties lo­cal­ly while build­ing on in­vest­ments al­ready es­tab­lished in the coun­try.

“It is a very good op­por­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­talise be­yond our bor­ders and to have a pres­ence in this kind of in­vest­ment,” he re­marked.
Morales Melén­dez con­grat­u­lat­ed the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T for pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and said Mex­i­co sees op­por­tu­ni­ties for ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment be­yond ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tions.