En­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it has en­er­gised the 2026 Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), as sev­er­al small busi­ness­es flocked to the event hop­ing to el­e­vate their brands in what most ad­mit­ted was a try­ing eco­nom­ic pe­ri­od.

The event was hailed on Thurs­day as the biggest TIC ever by Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj when he ad­dressed the me­dia af­ter in­ter­act­ing with some of the 411 booths on dis­play.

Dur­ing that in­ter­view, he boast­ed that the turnout was ev­i­dence that busi­ness con­fi­dence in Trinidad was surg­ing; how­ev­er, many busi­ness­es par­tic­i­pat­ing in the TIC told the Busi­ness Guardian they face sev­er­al com­mon chal­lenges rang­ing from eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty to sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions.

Many were ba­si­cal­ly re­signed to the fact that ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change is a re­cur­ring dif­fi­cul­ty for busi­ness­es in the re­gion, with Nari­ba Robin­son of Farm and Func­tion stat­ing, “forex is for­ev­er go­ing to be an is­sue.”

Farm and Func­tion is an El So­cor­ro-head­quar­tered group of com­pa­nies that spe­cialis­es in frozen fruits, veg­eta­bles and root crops. The com­pa­ny used this year’s TIC to es­pe­cial­ly show­case prod­ucts from its ar­ti­san line, such as its flavoured baos, frozen fries, gourmet pies and smooth­ies.

The com­pa­ny has sev­er­al man­u­fac­tur­ing plants through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, but not­ed that chal­lenges were not just ex­ter­nal.

“Some of the chal­lenges that we en­counter are a lot of our prod­ucts come from lo­cal farm­ers. We sup­port our lo­cal farm­ers 100 per cent. But one of the chal­lenges is that with price fluc­tu­a­tions, we might go and buy a pound of sweet pota­to to­day for $5 and go back next week, and it might be $10. And that’s be­cause the farm­ers them­selves are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing high costs of pro­duc­tion, so we’re try­ing to work with them as much as pos­si­ble to get stan­dard­ised pric­ing. But it’s on­ly so much the farm­ers could, you know, meet us on the halfway with, “ she said.

Robin­son and oth­ers ac­knowl­edged that the cur­rent econ­o­my is not as strong as peo­ple are tra­di­tion­al­ly ac­cus­tomed to, thus mak­ing max­i­mum use of events and op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by the con­ven­tion more im­por­tant, es­pe­cial­ly for SMEs.

This point was echoed by Gillian Nichol­son of But­ter­ball Tasty Treats and Gillian’s Cater­ing Ser­vices, who was heart­ened by the in­crease in small­er busi­ness­es present at the event.

“This is my fourth year. So pre­vi­ous­ly, the (larg­er) busi­ness­es that I saw (be­fore), well, they’re not here, but new, small­er mi­cro busi­ness­es I’m see­ing, which is good. The larg­er busi­ness­es make space for new mi­cro busi­ness­es to come, so that they will grow as well, which is a good thing,” she said.

An­oth­er emerg­ing busi­ness on dis­play, Al­che­mi Prod­ucts Ltd, said the com­pa­ny was us­ing the event as a means to bol­ster its pres­ence in Trinidad, hav­ing found some suc­cess in the ex­port mar­ket via a ma­jor dis­trib­u­tor in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Marisa Charles, who show­cased the com­pa­ny’s Bliss line of clean­ing prod­ucts, not­ed that the com­pa­ny has dis­trib­uted that line to Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, An­tigua, and Saint Lu­cia and has al­so in­di­cat­ed plans to ex­pand in­to the Guyana mar­ket.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that sup­ply chain is­sues had prompt­ed the com­pa­ny to piv­ot over the course of its three and a half years of op­er­a­tions.

“So, sup­ply is­sues are some­thing that we are cur­rent­ly fac­ing right now. Some of our prod­ucts, we’ve had to change fra­grances and scents just to make sure that we still get it to the con­sumer. But this is busi­ness, you know, If you look at the chal­lenges, you don’t see the op­por­tu­ni­ties. So we were able to use this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand,” Charles told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, as she stat­ed the com­pa­ny which had pre­vi­ous­ly used its con­nec­tion to hard­ware to build its cus­tomer base was slow­ly work­ing its way in­to ma­jor su­per­mar­ket chains.

Cub­by Car­go, an AI-pow­ered freight and lo­gis­tics plat­form de­vel­oped by Ramps Lo­gis­tics that al­lows users to eas­i­ly quote, book, and track ship­ments to and from the Caribbean, had a booth at the event for the sec­ond year with the theme Ex­pe­ri­ence the Fu­ture with Freight.

The Cub­by Car­go team al­so not­ed it had been a roller coast­er ride due to sev­er­al geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues which had im­pact­ed ship­ping routes.

Shiv­ana Loach, re­gion­al head of trade lanes at Cub­by Car­go, ex­plained that some ease in dis­rup­tions fol­low­ing the re­cent peace deal bro­kered con­cern­ing the Strait of Hor­muz was com­ing slow­ly.

“It’s been slow, but there have been lit­tle signs of things start­ing to get bet­ter geopo­lit­i­cal­ly,” said Loach, who said some re­gions would see im­prove­ments quick­er than most, but bunker and fu­el prices should drop in the near fu­ture.

The eco­nom­ic pres­sures faced by busi­ness­es were recog­nised by Courts Busi­ness So­lu­tions who not­ed that these chal­lenges em­pha­sised the need for ex­ter­nal busi­ness sup­port and fi­nanc­ing so­lu­tions.

“This is a brand that’s re­al­ly here to sup­port the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, and we saw that as the ide­al with every­thing that’s go­ing on in the glob­al mar­kets, in the econ­o­my. We know that busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties need that sup­port. And through Courts Busi­ness So­lu­tions, you can get that sup­port from us. You don’t have to go and look for for­eign ex­change out­side. You don’t have to go try to bring any stuff for your­self. If you need vol­ume sales, we could help you with that. So, we’re def­i­nite­ly here with this brand to sup­port in the com­mu­ni­ty space, and not just the large cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ties, but al­so en­tre­pre­neurs, self-em­ployed per­sons,” said Nare­sha Ali, se­nior brand man­ag­er at Uni­com­er.

Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my in the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Petal-Ann Roberts not­ed on Thurs­day that To­ba­go had 16 par­tic­i­pants housed at the To­ba­go booth at the event. How­ev­er, she too urged for more to be done to sup­port SMEs in their de­vel­op­ment.

“We have so many more en­tre­pre­neurs in To­ba­go, but we can on­ly have so much space here. We al­so have en­tre­pre­neurs who the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly have not spon­sored. So, they used to be spon­sored in the past, and they are now here on their own.

“And I’m very proud of what they have been do­ing, but we are just here to show­case what we have to of­fer and to lever­age the op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­port, for scal­ing up and for growth,” said Roberts, who said that agro-pro­cess­ing in par­tic­u­lar was grow­ing in in­ter­est on the is­land.

Roberts was al­so en­thu­si­as­tic that the is­land’s events and tourism prod­ucts would be prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the event.