An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­woman and for­mer To­ba­go Di­vi­sion chair of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Di­ane Hadad, has de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­port growth plans as promis­ing but lack­ing suf­fi­cient depth, warn­ing that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty still has ma­jor unan­swered ques­tions.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism’s Year One Re­port pre­sen­ta­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency on Wednes­day, Hadad said she left the event un­cer­tain whether the plans out­lined were ready for im­ple­men­ta­tion.
“I’m in a very queer place right now be­cause I am a busi­ness own­er. I’m a cit­i­zen of the coun­try. I’m a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee for tourism at the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (PSOTT), and I con­tribute in dif­fer­ent ways, but I have to say that, dis­ap­point­ing­ly for me as a busi­ness own­er, the pre­sen­ta­tion seems to be very much suc­cess the­atre in terms of how it is put for­ward to us, the cit­i­zens,” Hadad stat­ed.
“I am leav­ing here with a lot of ques­tions be­cause I do not know if the con­tri­bu­tions or the in­ten­tion is re­al­ly to try and give hope, some kind of pos­i­tive hope to the cit­i­zen­ry and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.”

The min­istry un­veiled an am­bi­tious strat­e­gy aimed at gen­er­at­ing an ad­di­tion­al US$2 bil­lion in non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 2027 and US$5 bil­lion by 2030 through a se­ries of re­forms tar­get­ing ex­ports, tourism, man­u­fac­tur­ing, trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and lo­cal pro­cure­ment.

Hadad ac­knowl­edged work was tak­ing place be­tween the min­istry and PSOTT, but said she be­lieved the pre­sen­ta­tion came too ear­ly.
“I do not know that we are at a stage where I feel con­fi­dent enough that pre­sen­ta­tions could have been made. Fur­ther to which, to me, this has been pre­ma­ture. The num­bers to me should have had some more depth,” she re­marked.
She ques­tioned whether enough specifics had been pro­vid­ed to con­vince stake­hold­ers that the tar­gets were achiev­able.
“Two bil­lion US in ex­ports, great plans, would love to hear how we’re go­ing to ac­tu­al­ly turn it in­to that? How are we get­ting it there? I would have liked to hear the ex­act in­dus­tries that they’re go­ing af­ter, who has bought in­to this, that kind of thing.”

Hadad al­so raised con­cerns about To­ba­go’s role in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dri­ve.

“The con­ver­sa­tion was about Trinidad and To­ba­go. I do not know then, where’s the tourism and the in­vest­ment part for To­ba­go?” she said.

She stressed that fi­nanc­ing, crime and broad­er eco­nom­ic con­di­tions al­so need­ed to be ad­dressed if the plans were to suc­ceed.

“The whole of COVID was fund­ed and paid for by the pri­vate sec­tor. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the fi­nan­cial sec­tor did not bear any brunt of that. The pri­vate sec­tor took all the licks, and they con­tin­ue to pay all the debt, loan and in­ter­est that they mul­ti­plied and ac­cu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing that two-year pe­ri­od.”

De­spite her reser­va­tions, Hadad com­mend­ed the min­istry’s at­tempt to en­gage stake­hold­ers.
“I want to still con­grat­u­late the min­is­ter for the at­tempt, but I still feel that there could have been a lit­tle bit more depth, in fact, a lot more depth, to what should have been giv­en to us.”

Con­crete plans for yachties

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Dr Col­in Neil Go­sine, de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy, say­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion was fo­cused on long-term trans­for­ma­tion rather than short-term gains.

He an­nounced sev­er­al ini­tia­tives in­tend­ed to im­prove trade and mar­itime ef­fi­cien­cy, in­clud­ing the launch of the Sail­Clear sys­tem in 2026. Go­sine said the dig­i­tal plat­form would re­duce pro­cess­ing times for yacht ar­rivals from four hours to 15 min­utes.

“This sys­tem has al­ready been tried, test­ed, and is sched­uled for a launch in 2026,” he not­ed.

He al­so high­light­ed the open­ing of the new Port Health Of­fice, which he said would dra­mat­i­cal­ly re­duce ves­sel clear­ance times.
“The launch of the new Port Health Of­fice will re­duce clear­ance times from two days to un­der two min­utes. I’ll say that again, from two days to un­der two min­utes.” “These ini­tia­tives will sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, trans­paren­cy and ease of pro­cess­ing for vis­it­ing ves­sels,” he added.

Go­sine out­lined the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to ex­pand tourism be­yond tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing seg­ments in­clud­ing Car­ni­val, culi­nary tourism, her­itage, mu­sic, vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts, film, pub­lish­ing, and gam­ing.

“We know FETE in this coun­try,” he said, while il­lus­trat­ing dif­fer­ences in tourism-spend­ing pat­terns be­tween events at­tract­ing for­eign vis­i­tors and those dri­ven main­ly by lo­cal pa­trons.

“There’s a dif­fer­ent un­der­stand­ing of tourism val­ue, and that is what we are show­ing here.”

The par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary dis­closed that nine tourism ac­com­mo­da­tion projects are cur­rent­ly in the pipeline, pro­ject­ed to cre­ate 577 rooms and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 741 per­ma­nent jobs by 2027 or 2028.
“The Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism are se­ri­ous about grow­ing the tourism sec­tor. We are very se­ri­ous,” Go­sine de­clared.

Ma­rine Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Jesse James wel­comed many of the ini­tia­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­forms af­fect­ing the mar­itime sec­tor.

“Com­ing here and leav­ing with ques­tions in your mind is kind of a good thing,” James stat­ed.

“It means peo­ple are think­ing.”

James said im­prove­ments to port health clear­ance and the roll­out of Sail­Clear rep­re­sent­ed long-over­due progress.
“We have about 95 per cent there,” he said on the Sail­Clear plat­form.
“It’s not be­ing talked about any­more. Ac­tion is hap­pen­ing now.”

He cred­it­ed stronger col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween min­istries, Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion, and pri­vate stake­hold­ers for help­ing to ad­vance re­forms that have stalled for decades.
“The ease of do­ing busi­ness is the fo­cus for us,” he said.
He out­lined that im­prov­ing yacht ar­rivals and mar­itime ef­fi­cien­cy could sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost for­eign ex­change in­flows in­to the econ­o­my.
“Maybe not the 2,000 fig­ure this year, but when Sail­Clear is im­ple­ment­ed, and there’s a big launch, and peo­ple get to find out about it and ease of do­ing busi­ness, we will get more peo­ple com­ing to Trinidad,” James ex­plained.
“It will just mean more for­eign ex­change com­ing to us be­cause I’m telling you, one boat could eas­i­ly spend US$25,000 to US$30,000. One cou­ple on a lit­tle 45 or 50-foot yacht could spend that be­cause of the amount of ser­vices that they’d use here,”he re­marked.

For­eign ex­change fo­cus

Di­rec­tor of Trade Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Neville Alexan­der out­lined the min­istry’s broad­er ex­port ex­pan­sion strat­e­gy, de­scrib­ing for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion as cen­tral to eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.
“For­eign ex­change is the lifeblood for trade and in­vest­ment,” Alexan­der said.

He re­vealed that the min­istry has in­te­grat­ed agen­cies, in­clud­ing Glob­al T&T, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards and the PSOTT in­to a ded­i­cat­ed ex­port lead­er­ship team tasked with in­creas­ing ex­ports and solv­ing bot­tle­necks more quick­ly.

Alexan­der said the min­istry’s re­search found that the top 50 ex­porters ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent of non-en­er­gy ex­ports an­nu­al­ly, lead­ing the Gov­ern­ment to pri­ori­tise di­rect en­gage­ment with those firms.

Among the ma­jor chal­lenges iden­ti­fied were port in­ef­fi­cien­cies, ac­cess to com­mer­cial space and for­eign ex­change short­ages.

To ad­dress those is­sues, the min­istry is propos­ing re­forms in­clud­ing stag­gered Cus­toms shifts, elim­i­na­tion of the over­time quo­ta sys­tem and leg­isla­tive amend­ments to the Port Au­thor­i­ty Act.

He said the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of those mea­sures could in­crease ex­ports by as much as 25 per cent an­nu­al­ly.

Alexan­der al­so re­vealed that more than 300 lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts across 18 sec­tors have been iden­ti­fied for sup­port through ad­just­ed du­ty rates and com­pet­i­tive­ness mea­sures.

He fur­ther an­nounced the launch of the na­tion­al “Buy Lo­cal, Build T&T” cam­paign aimed at en­cour­ag­ing greater con­sump­tion of lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods and ser­vices.

“Buy­ing more of what we pro­duce lo­cal­ly helps us save for­eign ex­change,” he stat­ed.

Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to pri­ori­tise pro­cure­ment of lo­cal goods and ser­vices where prac­ti­cal and ap­pro­pri­ate.