The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has a strat­e­gy to in­crease the coun­try’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 71 per cent by 2030.

So said TTMA pres­i­dent Dale Par­son, the CEO of Kalei­do­scope Paints, in a news re­lease is­sued by the Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

The CMA said the re­gion’s man­u­fac­tur­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tions are work­ing on medi­um to long-term growth strate­gies that are tar­get­ted to re­sult in an in­crease in that sec­tor’s con­tri­bu­tion to eco­nom­ic growth in their coun­try, by up to 30 per cent.

Par­son said the TTMA has out­lined a bold, mul­ti-pronged strat­e­gy to in­crease T&T’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports from $6.2 bil­lion to $10.6 bil­lion by 2030.

“The TTMA be­lieves that ide­al­ly, the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor would aim for 25-30 per cent Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) con­tri­bu­tion in the medi­um term, es­pe­cial­ly with con­tin­ued gov­ern­ment in­cen­tives and re­gion­al trade ex­pan­sion.”

In its news re­lease, the CMA said the coun­tries that are mem­bers of the Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (CMA) - Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, St. Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca - an­tic­i­pate a size­able in­crease in jobs once the sec­tor ex­pands ex­ports to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

“A re­al­is­tic medi­um-term goal is to grow this con­tri­bu­tion to 5-10 per cent of GDP, and in the longer term, through sus­tained pol­i­cy sup­port and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts, to achieve 10-20 per cet of GDP,” said Ram­say Ali, im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Guyana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (GM­SA) and cur­rent CMA pres­i­dent.

The Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sec­tor Re­port in the 2025 edi­tion of Caribbean Busi­ness & Trav­el fea­tures the pres­i­dents of the six man­u­fac­tur­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tions in the re­gion. It iden­ti­fies in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in man­u­fac­tur­ing in each of the CMA mem­ber coun­tries.

“Giv­en the chal­leng­ing and rapid­ly chang­ing glob­al trad­ing en­vi­ron­ment, we de­cid­ed it was time to throw the spot­light, once again, on the vast po­ten­tial of the re­gion’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and the scope for much-need­ed new in­vest­ment.

“We al­so fea­ture Cari­com’s re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al trade agree­ments,” said ed­i­tor San­dra Ann Bap­tiste, who is the chief ex­ec­u­tive con­sul­tant of Caribbean Sig­na­ture, a Flori­da-based con­sult­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and train­ing group.

“Guyana’s man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies are po­si­tion­ing them­selves to scale up and sup­ply crit­i­cal in­puts to the coun­try’s ex­pand­ing in­fra­struc­ture, hous­ing, and lo­gis­tics sec­tors. This cre­ates new op­por­tu­ni­ties for both lo­cal and for­eign in­vestors to part­ner in build­ing out the in­dus­tri­al sup­ply chain that sup­ports na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” said Ali, the CEO of Ster­ling Prod­ucts.

Im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Ja­maica Man­u­fac­tur­ers and Ex­porters As­so­ci­a­tion (JMEA) Syd­ney Thwait­es, who is the CEO of Ja­maica Lu­bri­cat­ing Spe­cial­ties, said in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in Ja­maica’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor con­tin­ue to grow, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas that sup­port im­port sub­sti­tu­tion for items such as ba­sic food prod­ucts, pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als, clean­ing agents and house­hold prod­ucts.

All of the Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­er as­so­ci­a­tions iden­ti­fied in­creas­ing trade mis­sions and ex­plor­ing re­gion­al and non-tra­di­tion­al mar­kets, such as Pana­ma, Colom­bia and Cos­ta Ri­ca, as a key strat­e­gy to dri­ve ex­ports.