Pe­ter Christo­pher

Busi­ness­es in Ari­ma are hop­ing to out­last what has been de­scribed as a re­ces­sion-type pe­ri­od in Trinidad’s most east­ern bor­ough.

On Mon­day, the Busi­ness Guardian vis­it­ed Ari­ma, where sev­er­al busi­ness own­ers, rang­ing from food ven­dors to gas sta­tion op­er­a­tors, de­scribed a large­ly stag­nant eco­nom­ic cli­mate punc­tu­at­ed by a de­cline in sales and re­cur­ring chal­lenges caused by a short­age of for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, among prob­lems, which came to the fore, were con­cerns about em­ploy­ment, both in terms of its im­pact on con­sumer spend­ing and the avail­abil­i­ty of qual­i­ty staff for work.

Gre­go­ry Walk­er, the own­er of the Dr Chow the Fruit Al­chemist, at the cor­ner of Green and Queen Street Ari­ma, not­ed the lack of skilled em­ploy­ees means he has had to man the stall.

“What I’ve re­alised: the ma­jor prob­lem seems to be with the em­ploy­ees that I would like to hire, right? The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem needs to al­so im­prove in the coun­try in or­der for us to get good work­ers, in or­der for busi­ness to grow,” said Walk­er, who ex­plained most peo­ple who ap­ply for the job hard­ly have three pass­es, and most strug­gle to op­er­ate a sim­ple scale which is cru­cial to his work in the fruit busi­ness.

The lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of qual­i­ty em­ploy­ees was al­so raised by for­mer Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent, Raj Jadoo, of Jadoo’s Trad­ing, when the Busi­ness Guardian vis­it­ed his store on Broad­way Street, Ari­ma.

‘The young gen­er­a­tion do not want to work. They want fast mon­ey,” said Jadoo, who al­so called for a re­view of the ed­u­ca­tion process as he saw lit­er­a­cy is­sues in both ap­pli­cants and cus­tomers. He urged for this to be ad­dressed as, more than ever, he felt young work­ers were not in­clined to make sac­ri­fices to learn skills to im­prove their stand­ing.

“What we want to see is an up­lift­ment. Our prob­lem is that we have cre­at­ed too many lazy peo­ple in this coun­try be­cause it’s just a give-me give-me syn­drome. They don’t want to work, but they want mon­ey.”

On the oth­er side of that equa­tion, sev­er­al busi­ness­es not­ed that job loss­es and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty as a re­sult across the coun­try had a dis­tinct im­pact on busi­ness.

“Busi­ness in Ari­ma tends to rel­a­tive­ly re­main on a con­stant ba­sis, ex­cept dur­ing par­tic­u­lar sea­sons when busi­ness will de­crease, and I’m get­ting that right now. The econ­o­my is play­ing a part in it be­cause of prob­a­bly the job in­sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try,” said Walk­er, “I’m not see­ing too many new en­trants (cus­tomers) com­ing in­to Ari­ma, and buy­ing. Ac­tu­al­ly, more and more the pop­u­la­tion ac­tu­al­ly seems to be cau­tious about how they’re spend­ing and what they’re spend­ing on right now. “

Own­er Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (ODA) Pres­i­dent Reval Chat­ter­goon, who has his Broad­way Ex­press Unipet sta­tion in the heart of Ari­ma, al­so said there were signs that re­duced em­ploy­ment has im­pact­ed con­sumer spend­ing, not just in the Bor­ough, but around the coun­try.

“There’s a big part of the sto­ry that peo­ple are not be­ing told, or they’re not be­ing heard, and that is con­tract work­ers are not get­ting re­newals,” said Chat­ter­goon at the gas sta­tion.

“I was con­fused in terms of ap­pli­ca­tions that I’m get­ting on my desk with so many peo­ple from the pub­lic ser­vice. So that tells me one sto­ry. Now, cou­pled with that, our in­dus­try is gas sta­tions. Gas sta­tions are the first tell­tale sign once you start to see fu­el sales start­ing to de­crease. Fu­el sales, and of course, around sum­mer it gen­er­al­ly takes a dip, but you’re still see­ing a 10 or 15 per cent de­crease in nor­mal sum­mer sales. That tells me that re­tail is go­ing to see a very hard time to come.”

He ex­plained that fol­low­ing the shut­down of Cepep pro­grammes, in ad­di­tion to the large num­ber of con­tract work­ers los­ing their jobs, there were few­er peo­ple earn­ing an in­come. As a re­sult, more of the pub­lic was far more se­lec­tive with spend­ing, and it is ev­i­dent across in­dus­tries.

‘”If they don’t have mon­ey to per­haps go to restau­rants, cin­e­ma, and then they don’t need fu­el. So, this is not a stand­alone sit­u­a­tion. We need the mass­es, the un­skilled labour, to get some mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment in our in­dus­try,” said Chat­ter­goon.

He stressed, “For busi­ness through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, not on­ly Ari­ma. It’s sim­ply that the man on the street has to get some sort of in­come. You have to be able to work for a fair day’s wage to get a fair day’s salary. Once you see that you’re crip­pling that mar­ket, the month-to-month pay cheque, the day-to-day pay cheque, the week-to-week pay cheque, you’re sti­fling the whole ecosys­tem,”

The in­escapable forex chal­lenge

Chat­ter­goon al­so ad­mit­ted the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to have a detri­men­tal ef­fect on his busi­ness. How­ev­er, he and oth­er Ari­ma busi­ness­es felt the sys­tem was clear­ly favour­ing some over oth­ers.

“The forex sit­u­a­tion seems to be af­fect­ing on­ly a par­tic­u­lar sec­tor, be­cause we have seen some peo­ple have been able to raise it on a black mar­ket, but where are they get­ting it from? I per­son­al­ly have to beg for a lit­tle bit of US on my card to buy my hang­ing hard­ware. And rather than buy once for the year, I have to buy a lit­tle every month at a huge ad­di­tion­al cost,” said Chat­ter­goon.

Jadoo al­so ad­mit­ted that his busi­ness had been crip­pled for years by lim­it­ed for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty.

“The biggest chal­lenge is for­eign ex­change, and that is a prob­lem at this point in time, all be­cause of what tran­spired be­fore. But it is over four years now I haven’t got­ten any for­eign cur­ren­cy to bring goods in­to the coun­try, which is bad. And with­out that, how could we sur­vive? And as you know, as I know, oth­er peo­ple had it at their leisure. Which was un­fair and un­just,” said Jadoo, who ex­plained he had no choice but to find an al­ter­na­tive method of sourc­ing prod­ucts for his store, which has been in op­er­a­tion for over four decades.

Re­cent news about the Gov­ern­ment’s bor­row­ing al­so raised con­cerns for Chat­ter­goon, who said, “If we bor­row US$800 mil­lion and we have so many forex prob­lems, where will we get in this US to pay it back? I mean, they say I have of­fi­cial­ly begged the US for my gas sta­tions just to pay for the pump, the soft­ware every month, $300 or $400 I have to beg for US to get hose and noz­zle.”

Small­er busi­ness­es in Ari­ma have seen the pinch as goods im­port­ed by whole­salers have seen sharp in­creas­es, which in turn has led to low­er prof­it mar­gins.

But the price in­creas­es were not lim­it­ed to im­port­ed goods.

Mar­ket fluc­tu­a­tion frus­tra­tions

Sev­er­al food and fruit ven­dors all ad­mit­ted that the ris­ing price of goods was a chal­lenge they had to nav­i­gate week by week.

Walk­er told the Busi­ness Guardian,”Yes, I’m see­ing plen­ty of price fluc­tu­a­tions right now. What the sup­pli­ers are say­ing, most­ly the farm­ers. They are see­ing that the cost of fer­tilis­ers and oth­er com­po­nents, the chem­i­cals that they need to use for the crops, has been in­creas­ing. I don’t know if it’s be­cause of the war (in the Mid­dle East) or be­cause of the econ­o­my or what­ev­er it may be, but the in­creas­es there and the prices are con­tin­u­ous­ly go­ing up. “

At A&A Fruits and Smooth­ies, a ven­dor who did not wish to be named said, ‘We buy from the whole­salers, but I don’t know if (for­eign ex­change) is what’s af­fect­ing them. That’s why the price is go­ing re­al­ly high, and you’re not re­al­ly get­ting the amount of stuff that you will get nor­mal­ly; you’re not get­ting that.”

This, cou­pled with a slow­down in sales, was a trou­bling equa­tion the ven­dor ex­plained.

“Busi­ness has fall­en by 50 per cent right now be­cause of what is go­ing on in the coun­try. It’s like a re­ces­sion right now. It’s like a re­ces­sion be­cause the prices are the fruits that we sell. The prices are ex­or­bi­tant right now, re­al­ly high,” said the A&A ven­dor.

An­oth­er pro­duce ven­dor, Stephen Gib­bon, sim­i­lar­ly ex­plained this was a ma­jor chal­lenge he faced.

“It’s ex­pen­sive right now in the mar­ket. When you’re go­ing in the mar­ket, spend­ing a pound and a crown, and you’re re­al­ly not mak­ing much, but we still try. I al­so work oth­er­wise as a se­cu­ri­ty in the night, and this is what I’m do­ing in the day. So I’m do­ing dou­ble work right now, just to try to keep up. You know, since COVID, it’s been hard,” said the ven­dor, who sells cu­cum­bers, toma­toes, av­o­ca­dos and oth­er veg­eta­bles out­side of Sub­way on Broad­way.

He con­tin­ued, “It does in­crease and de­crease. So it does go up, and it does go down. It is fluc­tu­at­ing. So some­times you go, you might get some­thing a lit­tle cheap, and then the same thing you go back for, you might get it more ex­pen­sive.”

At the L8 Mi­ni Mart on Queen Street, a store at­ten­dant not­ed sev­er­al items were go­ing up.

“I will say, prices are ris­ing in every­thing, lit­er­al­ly every­thing. SM Jaleel prices raised. Caribbean Cool now is $8, it used to be $6.”

The at­ten­dant, how­ev­er, ex­plained the mi­ni mart did see high de­mand for vapes and cig­a­rettes, with the for­mer of­ten sell­ing out be­fore the sup­ply is re­stocked at the end of a work week.

To com­bat the fluc­tu­a­tion, Gib­bon said he has looked at vary­ing cost-sav­ing mea­sures,

“Well, we bud­get. If I could buy a bag last week, I’ll buy a half bag this week and try to make it,” said Gib­bon, “But it’s all right. It’s sell­ing good. These cu­cum­bers come from a part­ner. I have a part­ner; he is from Brazil (Vil­lage), right? He’s plant­i­ng these cu­cum­bers, so at least we sav­ing on the cu­cum­bers. We are mak­ing a lit­tle ex­tra on the cu­cum­bers and stuff.”

But ul­ti­mate­ly his wish was for reg­u­la­tion of mar­ket prices.

“I would like to see the mar­ket price at a stan­dard price. I would like to see we are get­ting qual­i­ty goods for our mon­ey in­stead of we hav­ing to go and have to buy sec­ond-hand goods for a cheap­er price and then have to sell it for sell it back for a less­er price,” said Gib­bon, who is a ven­dor by day and se­cu­ri­ty guard by night to make ends meet.

New busi­ness hope

Dur­ing the vis­it to Ari­ma, the Busi­ness Guardian en­coun­tered two women who had re­cent­ly es­tab­lished a spot in Ari­ma’s com­mer­cial dis­trict.

Lisann Smith, the founder and own­er of Love in Every Bite, re­cent­ly re­lo­cat­ed to Ari­ma from Ma­yaro to sup­port her daugh­ters while they stud­ied. While she too ad­mit­ted the change in prices was al­so a chal­lenge, Smith said she was en­cour­aged with the re­sponse in her first cou­ple of weeks in op­er­a­tion there.

‘”Def­i­nite­ly some of the prices. It is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. I grew up in coun­try life, so we know about go­ing by the neigh­bour and get­ting co­conut, go­ing by the neigh­bour and get­ting green fig. So to pur­chase those things now is dif­fer­ent for me. Def­i­nite­ly an ad­just­ment,” said Smith, who had pre­vi­ous­ly sold food un­der con­tract to en­er­gy com­pa­nies Shell and BP in Guaygua­yare.

“It has been awe­some. Ac­tu­al­ly, I’m not an out­side per­son, but this street don’t sleep. They are out 24 hours, so I love the lo­ca­tion for the fact that it is re­al­ly good for busi­ness be­cause they don’t sleep, so they buy food prac­ti­cal­ly for the en­tire day. “

An­oth­er woman, who start­ed sell­ing her Tasty Treats at the “Snack Box” stall near the Ari­ma mar­ket, said she was pleased with busi­ness since mov­ing op­er­a­tions from her Mal­abar home just over a month ago.

She had tran­si­tioned in­to this busi­ness af­ter a long ca­reer as a preschool teacher.

Crime con­cerns

While there were oth­ers who raised con­cerns about crime, both women said they pre­ferred to be up­beat.

“I don’t live in fear. I don’t train my­self to live in fear. I think any­where you go, there’s a mea­sure of crime, and there’s a mea­sure what­ev­er. I live in my present and I live pos­i­tive, so I try not to fo­cus on that. Still putting mea­sures in place for safe­ty, but I don’t dwell on it,” said Smith.

How­ev­er, Chat­ter­goon felt more could be done, par­tic­u­lar­ly with a State of Emer­gency in ef­fect.

“We are not feel­ing safe. Yes­ter­day or the day be­fore, there was a mur­der in a busi­ness sim­i­lar to mine, a dear friend of mine. Is that the new norm? We have been lob­by­ing for bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty. Whichev­er hat that I wear, I’ve been ask­ing for greater re­sources for Ari­ma. We’ve been ask­ing for pa­trols, but where are the checks and bal­ances? “ said Chat­ter­goon.

The Ven­dor at A&A echoed a con­cern which had been shared by San­gre Grande busi­ness­men late last week about the so­cial­ly dis­placed not be­ing prop­er­ly man­aged.

There was an ac­knowl­edge­ment from those in­ter­viewed that there were sev­er­al new hous­ing and busi­ness de­vel­op­ments in and around Ari­ma , but the Busi­ness Guardian was told it had done lit­tle to change the dy­nam­ics in the bor­ough from a busi­ness stand­point.