The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is a vi­tal pil­lar and a key dri­ver of com­pet­i­tive­ness in the econ­o­my as it is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the coun­try’s GDP, a net for­eign ex­change earn­er and a ma­jor em­ploy­er.

Based on da­ta from the lat­est re­view of the econ­o­my the sec­tor’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP in­creased to 21.0 per cent in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2020, up from 20.3 per cent in the fourth quar­ter of 2019 and em­ploys in ex­cess of 50,000 peo­ple.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian said the sec­tor has main­tained its re­silience and adapt­abil­i­ty de­spite in­her­ent prob­lems over the years, em­pha­sis­ing that it re­mains a cat­a­lyst for achiev­ing eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, ex­pan­sion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and is a pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, the sec­tor is not with­out its chal­lenges.

Gopee-Scoon iden­ti­fied these as ca­pac­i­ty build­ing con­straints, re­search and de­vel­op­ment con­straints, in­suf­fi­cient hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty, lim­it­ed ac­cess to fi­nance and for­eign ex­change es­pe­cial­ly for small­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, in­ad­e­quate mar­ket ac­cess and ex­port pro­mo­tion and in­sti­tu­tion­al fac­tors af­fect­ing ease of do­ing busi­ness.

The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, as­sured that her min­istry con­tin­ues to be res­olute in its dri­ve to ad­dress these is­sues and con­tin­ues to im­ple­ment a ro­bust agen­da of tar­get­ed mea­sures to grow and ex­pand the sec­tor to en­sure it be­comes re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive.

For in­stance, Gopee-Scoon said Gov­ern­ment is ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing a se­ries of mea­sures at strength­en­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of firms in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of leg­is­la­tion to es­tab­lish the T&T Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Ser­vice for Con­for­mi­ty As­sess­ment (TTAS­CA) and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Na­tion­al Qual­i­ty Pol­i­cy (NQP).

Gopee-Scoon said fol­low­ing its launch in Jan­u­ary 2020 leg­is­la­tion to es­tab­lish TTAS­CA will be com­plet­ed by the end of 2021 to al­low lo­cal labs (in­clud­ing those in­volved in food, med­ical and prod­uct test­ing) to be ac­cred­it­ed lo­cal­ly to pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised re­sults.

She added that a fa­cil­i­ta­tor has al­ready been pro­cured and the train­ing com­po­nent for the staff and as­ses­sors who would tran­si­tion from TT­LABS to TTAS­CA will com­mence in Ju­ly 2021.

“Work is al­so on-go­ing to im­ple­ment the tenets of the Na­tion­al Qual­i­ty Pol­i­cy. This in­volves the ac­cred­i­ta­tion of pub­lic lab­o­ra­to­ries. The prepa­ra­tion and ac­cred­i­ta­tion as­sess­ment for two lab­o­ra­to­ries (In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um have been com­plet­ed,” Gopee-Scoon said, adding that a call for ad­di­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ries to be as­sessed has been is­sued by the TTBS.

It is ex­pect­ed that two ad­di­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ries will be se­lect­ed for as­sess­ment.

Strength­en and cre­ate link­ages to sup­port do­mes­tic and re­gion­al sup­ply chains

The Trade Min­istry has al­so de­vel­oped a com­pre­hen­sive pro­file data­base of the raw ma­te­r­i­al needs of man­u­fac­tur­ers and iden­ti­fied lo­cal­ly sourced in­puts (im­port sub­sti­tu­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties).

Thus far, Gopee-Scoon said, it has de­vel­oped a draft list of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 raw ma­te­r­i­al prod­ucts im­port­ed by 86 man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies in 15 sub-sec­tors from the re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers.

The im­port da­ta is be­ing analysed by the min­istry to in­form pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove ac­cess to more af­ford­able and high qual­i­ty in­puts from lo­cal and re­gion­al sources, she said.

The min­istry has al­so com­menced pre­lim­i­nary re­search on a study to map ex­ist­ing re­gion­al val­ue chains for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in Cari­com and iden­ti­fy ex­ist­ing and po­ten­tial for­ward and back­ward link­ages.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, to en­hance the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, an ap­pren­tice­ship pro­gramme will be launched in fis­cal 2022 in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trade Min­istry, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion and the Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny-In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIC-IT), Gopee-Scoon out­lined.

She ex­plained the three-year pro­gramme is aligned with the Ger­man Dual Mod­el of ap­pren­tice­ship train­ing.

It will in­clude train­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 trainees in se­lect­ed oc­cu­pa­tion­al ar­eas with­in the sec­tor name­ly me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing, in­dus­tri­al main­te­nance tech­nol­o­gy and elec­tri­cal/elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy and will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny-In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIC-IT).

The ob­jec­tives in­clude es­tab­lish­ing an ap­pren­tice­ship train­ing pro­gramme that meets and ex­ceeds the re­quire­ments of the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, en­hanc­ing the hu­man re­source com­pe­ten­cies with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly and pro­duc­ing grad­u­ates with the req­ui­site com­pe­ten­cies thus en­hanc­ing their mar­ketabil­i­ty and em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

The Port of Port-of-Spain.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Food and bev­er­age sec­tor do­ing well

De­spite the Gov­ern­ment re­stric­tions on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sion the food and bev­er­age sec­tor con­tin­ues to thrive, Gopee-Scoon said.

She ex­plained it was closed for a very short pe­ri­od as it re­mains nec­es­sary to sup­ply goods to the su­per­mar­kets.

“Where we see the most progress with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is in the food and bev­er­age. For the most part they were in op­er­a­tion and many of them were able to sup­ply the lo­cal mar­ket how­ev­er, there were con­straints with ex­port­ing to the re­gion and at vary­ing times be­cause some coun­tries had closed their bor­ders.

“But by and large man­u­fac­tur­ers were in sur­vival mode and as those mar­kets opened up with­in the re­gion they were able to sup­ply those as well,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She not­ed that while there were al­so con­straints for man­u­fac­tur­ers in ac­cess­ing for­eign in­puts and in terms of avail­abil­i­ty man­u­fac­tur­ers how­ev­er, sourced al­ter­na­tive mar­kets.

Build­ing a Green Econ­o­my

(Green Man­u­fac­tur­ing)

Ac­cord­ing to Gopee-Scoon, as ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the T&T Trade Pol­i­cy (2019-2023), the de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s Green In­dus­tries will al­so be pur­sued for ex­port, as well as, for in­puts in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Green in­dus­tries in­clud­ing green/ biodegrad­able prod­ucts such as uten­sils and food con­tain­ers, will be pur­sued for in­puts in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing as well as ex­port, she added.

Green re­new­able en­er­gy (eg so­lar pan­el as­sem­bly), which pro­vides a foun­da­tion and in­fra­struc­ture to oth­er sec­tors; the green­ing of tra­di­tion­al sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture, agro-pro­cess­ing and niche agri­cul­ture such as high­er val­ue added co­coa pro­duc­tion are among the ar­eas to be pur­sued.

Fur­ther, via Gov­ern­ment’s Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive it will en­cour­age ac­tiv­i­ty in green in­dus­tries and as­sist firms to adopt more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly or green prod­uct pack­ag­ing in­clud­ing ex­porters who are tran­si­tion­ing in­to sus­tain­able 100 per cent re­cy­clable pack­ag­ing and com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in mak­ing an in­vest­ment in green pack­ag­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies will ben­e­fit from tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to tran­si­tion to more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly pack­ag­ing prac­tices and pro­duc­tion.

Gopee-Scoon added that ex­porTT is fi­nal­is­ing the roll-out plan for this ini­tia­tive which is ex­pect­ed to com­mence by the end of fis­cal 2021.

Re­view of the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff and Rules of Ori­gin

In ful­fil­ment of po­si­tions put for­ward by the pri­vate sec­tor dur­ing the dis­cus­sions on the Roadmap for Re­cov­ery, Gopee-Scoon said the min­istry is re­view­ing the cus­toms du­ties/tar­iffs for a num­ber of non-en­er­gy ex­port items.

It is in­tend­ed that the pol­i­cy space pro­vid­ed be­tween ap­plied rates of du­ties and the ef­fec­tive WTO bound rates will be uti­lized to en­hance out­put in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor of the econ­o­my, she said.

This ini­tia­tive will en­com­pass a scope of more than 80 tar­iff lines.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it will ap­ply to those sec­tors and com­pa­nies where there re­mains sig­nif­i­cant un­der­utilised pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty which can be mo­bilised to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact both em­ploy­ment cre­ation and the gen­er­a­tion of for­eign ex­change.

Fur­ther, she said ne­go­ti­a­tions for the ex­pan­sion of pref­er­en­tial ac­cess be­tween Cari­com and Colom­bia have com­menced. Both Cari­com and Colom­bia have ex­changed re­quest lists and con­sul­ta­tions with min­istries, agen­cies and pri­vate sec­tor are on-go­ing to de­ter­mine T&T’s po­si­tions on the type of ac­cess that can be of­fered.

Gopee-Scoon said the ne­go­ti­a­tion process is usu­al­ly lengthy, which re­quires agree­ment from all Cari­com mem­ber States on spe­cif­ic prod­uct po­si­tions and al­so con­stant en­gage­ment with Colom­bia.

Trade Mis­sions

To pro­mote ex­ports to new and tra­di­tion­al mar­kets the Min­istry of Trade has host­ed trade mis­sions to 17 coun­tries of strate­gic in­ter­est in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Guyana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma and Cana­da.

These in­volved over 180 com­pa­nies which gen­er­at­ed new ex­port or­ders, Gopee-Scoon said.

She said dis­cus­sions have tak­en place with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs on sev­er­al ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­mer­cial of­fice, at­tached to the Em­bassy in Pana­ma to pro­mote ex­port growth in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

“It will sig­nif­i­cant­ly raise aware­ness of the coun­try’s trade and ex­port pro­file, lever­ag­ing the ex­ist­ing TT-Pana­ma Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment and al­so deep­en mar­ket ac­cess in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca,” Gopee-Scoon ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said as­sign­ment of trade at­tachés/com­mer­cial of­fi­cers in Ja­maica and Guyana will fur­ther im­prove mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion by pro­vid­ing re­al time in­for­ma­tion to ex­porters on chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties in the mar­kets and as­sist in nav­i­gat­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry and le­gal frame­works.

Gopee-Scoon added that the trade at­taché in Guyana will al­so be re­spon­si­ble for trade ac­tiv­i­ties with Suri­name and will fo­cus on fa­cil­i­tat­ing the ex­port of en­er­gy ser­vices, as well as, oth­er non-en­er­gy ex­ports and ser­vices.

The trade at­taché based in Ja­maica will be re­spon­si­ble for the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Hait­ian mar­kets. Ja­maica and Guyana have con­sis­tent­ly been the top mar­kets for T&T’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports over the past five years.

Vir­tu­al trade mis­sions for fis­cal 2021 in­clude Ja­maica (Ju­ly –Au­gust 2021); Guyana (Ju­ly-Au­gust 2021); and

Mi­a­mi - Fash­ion (Au­gust-Sep­tem­ber 2021) - with Fash­ionTT and top 10 de­sign­ers in T&T.

Vir­tu­al trade mis­sions for fis­cal 2022 will com­prise Colom­bia (Carta­ge­na), Cana­da, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Mi­a­mi.

Gopee-Scoon added that the Trade Min­istry through ex­porTT will par­tic­i­pate in the fourth Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po­si­tion in Shang­hai, Chi­na in No­vem­ber 2021, to in­crease and di­ver­si­fy T&T’s ex­ports to Chi­na.

She added there have been col­lab­o­ra­tions with the Chi­nese Em­bassy to iden­ti­fy niche prod­ucts (in­clud­ing bit­ters, rum and choco­lates) and to match do­mes­tic ex­porters with Chi­nese buy­ers to sup­ply prod­ucts to the mid­dle and up­per-class in Shang­hai and else­where in Chi­na.

Fi­nanc­ing sup­port to man­u­fac­tur­ers

The Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (RDF) which was re­vised in 2017 is a grant fund that pro­vides fi­nan­cial sup­port to the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices sec­tors to stim­u­late and sup­port in­vest­ment in new and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion as a com­pet­i­tive­ness en­hance­ment tool.

Gopee-Scoon ex­plained that fund­ing is avail­able for three phas­es.

Phase One (tech­ni­cal and em­pir­i­cal mar­ket re­search, up to a max­i­mum of $100,000 over a six-month pe­ri­od); Phase Two (pro­to­type de­vel­op­ment and proof-of-con­cept, up to a max­i­mum of $750,000; Phase Three (costs re­lat­ed to launch­ing the prod­uct or process in the mar­ket place, up to a max­i­mum of $150,000).

The RDF, Gopee-Scoon said pro­motes in­no­va­tion and the de­vel­op­ment of new com­pet­i­tive goods and ser­vices, es­pe­cial­ly amongst mi­cro, small- and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

Sev­en com­pa­nies ben­e­fit­ed from RDF in 2020 to 2021 amount­ing to TT$3,075,705.

Fur­ther, the min­is­ter said the Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (GFF), which was launched in No­vem­ber 2017, pro­vides fund­ing of 50 per cent up to TT$250,000 per ap­pli­cant for the ac­qui­si­tion of new ma­chin­ery, equip­ment, tech­nol­o­gy/soft­ware.

Twen­ty com­pa­nies have ben­e­fit­ed from the fund and the to­tal dis­burse­ment for 2017 to 2021 was TT$3,817,695.09.

Gopee-Scoon al­so not­ed that the Co-Fi­nanc­ing Fa­cil­i­ty was launched in 2014 and cov­ers el­e­ments such as ex­port plan­ning, train­ing, stan­dards im­ple­men­ta­tion, pack­ag­ing and la­belling, mar­ket in­tel­li­gence, ex­port de­vel­op­ment and web­site de­vel­op­ment and up­grade.

For fis­cal 2016 to 2021, 66 com­pa­nies ben­e­fit­ed from this fa­cil­i­ty with a to­tal fund­ing of TT$6,022,951.24.

Gov­ern­ment, Gopee-Scoon said al­so in­tro­duced a suite of busi­ness sup­port mea­sures to mit­i­gate the ad­verse im­pacts on busi­ness and com­merce by work­ing through var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions such as NED­CO, ap­proved com­mer­cial banks and cred­it unions to pro­vide ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, es­pe­cial­ly to Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

Through the Guar­an­teed Loan Fa­cil­i­ty, TT$229 mil­lion has been made avail­able to busi­ness­es, while more tar­get­ed mea­sures for MSMEs through the NED­CO Grant Pro­gramme pro­vid­ed a to­tal of TT$16 mil­lion in funds to com­pa­nies up to TT$20,000 per ap­pli­cant, Gopee-Scoon added.

And to ad­dress the fi­nanc­ing con­straints faced by man­u­fac­tur­ers and im­porters, es­pe­cial­ly in the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change to fi­nance im­ports of ba­sic food, es­sen­tial items and in­puts in­to the pro­duc­tion process dur­ing COVID-19, Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$400 mil­lion via the EX­IM­BANK Ltd through two spe­cif­ic fa­cil­i­ties name­ly, the FOREX fa­cil­i­ty for man­u­fac­tur­ers and the Forex Al­lo­ca­tion Sys­tem (FAS).

Gopee-Scoon said these fi­nanc­ing fa­cil­i­ties specif­i­cal­ly tar­get man­u­fac­tur­ers, im­porters and dis­trib­u­tors of food, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and oth­er COVID-19 es­sen­tials and fa­cil­i­tate the im­por­ta­tion of ba­sic and es­sen­tial items in­to the coun­try there­by pre­vent­ing any short­ages.

How­ev­er, the re­liance can­not be on Gov­ern­ment alone, Gopee-Scoon said, adding that she is is ex­pect­ed to meet with the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion to un­der­stand its role in the de­vel­op­ment of small busi­ness­es.

“These in­clude fam­i­ly busi­ness­es that ac­tu­al­ly grad­u­ate in­to larg­er firms and these are the ones that are go­ing to form a large part of the busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try. There must be a role for bank to play as we talk about trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my,” the min­is­ter added.