The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor con­tin­ues to be re­silient and even in­no­v­a­tive de­spite chal­lenges brought on by COVID-19.

And, as part of its sur­vival mode and fu­ture thrust, the sec­tor has em­braced tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion which have en­abled en­ti­ties to re­tool and of­fer new prod­uct of­fer­ings with short turn­around times, pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Tri­cia Coos­al told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“Com­pa­nies were able to reimag­ine their prod­ucts to en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty with a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage. This en­sured con­tin­ued sur­vival in a mar­ket com­plete­ly changed by the pan­dem­ic.

“Oth­er com­pa­nies rein­vent­ed and cre­at­ed new val­ue through a far greater re­spon­sive­ness to their end cus­tomer via ac­cel­er­at­ed prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in­no­va­tion,” Coos­al ex­plained.

She al­so not­ed that many com­pa­nies have al­so set new stan­dards and shift­ed from old par­a­digms to build long-term strate­gic com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages.

But the Gov­ern­ment must al­so play its role in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion process, Coos­al said, adding that it must be ready to piv­ot with the sec­tor and con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment dig­i­tal so­lu­tions to al­low tech­nol­o­gy-based op­er­a­tions to be ef­fec­tive and suc­cess­ful.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ex­ports, a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent of man­u­fac­tur­ing will al­so play an in­te­gral part if the sec­tor is to be pro­pelled, not on­ly re­gion­al­ly but al­so in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Coos­al said T&T is at a piv­otal point in the growth path for ex­ports, adding that the coun­try can no longer de­pend on en­er­gy, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the un­cer­tain­ty in oil prices.

She not­ed that in 2020 the TTMA launched its ex­port man­u­fac­tur­ing strat­e­gy to dou­ble lo­cal ex­ports by 2025.

Some com­pa­nies, Coos­al cit­ed, have al­ready grown de­spite the pan­dem­ic, not­ing that As­so­cia­tive Brands In­dus­tries Ltd has ex­pand­ed ex­ports to Cyprus with the lo­cal choco­late bar Catch be­ing re­tailed in that mar­ket from Sep­tem­ber 2021.

There have al­so been the suc­cess­ful ex­pan­sion via ex­port of small­er or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Kam­ri Glass Ltd ex­port­ing in­to re­gion­al mar­kets of Guyana and Ja­maica in June 2021.

Medi­um-sized or­gan­i­sa­tions such as RHS Mar­ket­ing (Karibbean Flavours) al­so en­tered in­to the UK and Cen­tral Eu­ro­pean mar­kets in April 2021, Mar­tinique in May 2021 and al­so ex­pand­ed in the North Amer­i­can mar­ket in­to dif­fer­ent states since Feb­ru­ary 2021.

In terms of mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion Coos­al said mar­kets with read­i­ly avail­able op­por­tu­ni­ties and good prospects in­clude Cen­tral Amer­i­ca such as Pana­ma and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and oth­er is­lands like Cu­ba.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that in some Cen­tral Amer­i­ca coun­tries and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic there ex­ist non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers which can be ob­sta­cles to the ex­port dri­ve.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Coos­al not­ed that Cu­ba has unique chal­lenges such as de­layed pay­ment terms and the Helms-Bur­ton Act; the le­gal foun­da­tion of the Unit­ed States’ em­bar­go on Cu­ba aimed at pre­vent­ing in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies from en­gag­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al trade with Cu­ba by sub­ject­ing for­eign na­tion­als to trav­el re­stric­tions and fi­nan­cial li­a­bil­i­ties in the US.

How­ev­er, the TTMA con­tin­ues to work with Gov­ern­ment and Cari­com to con­vene joint coun­cil meet­ings where these non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers can be ne­go­ti­at­ed.

Main­tain­ing mar­ket share de­spite re­stric­tions

The TTMA’s close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Trade and the Min­istry of Health dur­ing Gov­ern­ment’s sec­ond re­stric­tions al­lowed non-es­sen­tial man­u­fac­tur­ers to pre­serve their busi­ness mo­men­tum, Coos­al said.

“The TTMA di­rect­ly ac­tioned the lob­by­ing of Gov­ern­ment to per­mit man­u­fac­tur­ers with ex­port or­ders to re­open in a lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty to ful­fil im­me­di­ate or­ders,” she ex­plained.

She al­so not­ed that man­u­fac­tur­ers re­designed and in­no­vat­ed op­er­a­tions due to cur­few hours by ad­just­ing shifts for work­ers who would have had to be in the fac­to­ries and shift­ing pro­duc­tion or­ders to oth­er mar­kets, en­gag­ing in prod­uct in­no­va­tion to meet grow­ing de­mands of goods not in the gen­er­al port­fo­lio and in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy to en­sure ef­fec­tive route-to-mar­ket.

Fur­ther, Coos­al said, many com­pa­nies al­so set new stan­dards and shift­ed from old par­a­digms to build long-term strate­gic com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

She said the TTMA stands ready to work with those in au­thor­i­ty to ad­dress oth­er is­sues fac­ing the sec­tor like the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

“Our man­u­fac­tur­ers gen­er­al­ly are op­er­at­ing op­ti­mal­ly in their cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment how­ev­er, be­yond the fac­to­ry gates is where the chal­lenges lie. We are con­stant­ly faced with de­lays on the port main­ly caused by in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions not op­er­at­ing at max­i­mum po­ten­tial. Fac­tors as sim­ple as traf­fic con­ges­tion on high­way ar­ter­ies de­lays trans­porta­tion which leads to in­ef­fi­cien­cies in process­es, al­so the sig­nif­i­cant cost in­curred in the hire of ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty and not be­ing able to run a fac­to­ry 24/7 due to in­creas­ing crime,” Coos­al ex­plained.

How­ev­er, she ap­plaud­ed the ef­forts by the Min­is­ter of Trade to re­solve bot­tle­necks that stymie the growth of do­ing busi­ness in T&T, adding that this will en­cour­age align­ment and syn­er­gies of all rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agen­cies to dri­ve the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Forex chal­lenges

The ma­jor­i­ty of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor has a con­tin­u­ous need for for­eign ex­change for sur­vival, Coos­al said, adding that one of the most im­por­tant us­es of forex is to pur­chase raw ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment.

She ex­plained that many of the raw ma­te­r­i­al need­ed is sourced out­side T&T as re­quire­ments are not pro­duced lo­cal­ly in the quan­ti­ties and/or spec­i­fi­ca­tions need­ed.

TTMA, how­ev­er, con­tin­ues to work with Ex­im Bank to en­sure mem­bers have ac­cess to the for­eign ex­change fa­cil­i­ty to as­sist in meet­ing de­mands.

The fa­cil­i­ty is spe­cif­ic to man­u­fac­tur­ers to be used for the pur­chase of raw ma­te­r­i­al, ship­ping line costs and the pur­chase of equip­ment and ma­chin­ery.

Coos­al not­ed that from the launch of the fa­cil­i­ty on May 4, 2018 to June 31, 2021, US$160,072,140 was ac­cessed by 107 man­u­fac­tur­ers for mul­ti­ple pur­chas­es.

Apart form large firms, the TTMA’s mem­ber­ship con­sists of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 85 per cent small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

How­ev­er, start-up com­pa­nies are not present­ly a part of its mem­ber­ship, Coos­al said.

But she not­ed that the TTMA is aware that sev­er­al mech­a­nisms for fund­ing ex­ist for start-up com­pa­nies, out­side the gen­er­al bank­ing sys­tem the Gov­ern­ment, through en­ti­ties such as Ned­co, ex­porTT and the Ju­nior Stock Ex­change of­fer start-up cap­i­tal for qual­i­fied com­pa­nies.

She al­so ad­vised that start-up com­pa­nies ac­cess cap­i­tal lo­cal­ly via cred­it unions and re­gion­al as­sis­tance via the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency.

Eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion

Ac­cord­ing to Coos­al, the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly food and bev­er­age, agro-pro­cess­ing, con­struc­tion, print­ing and pack­ag­ing and chem­i­cals can aid in grow­ing the econ­o­my as well as oth­er po­ten­tial sec­tors such as the cre­ative in­dus­tries, health­care, busi­ness and sport tourism.

She said the TTMA has not­ed that with­in the last year and a half as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic, there has been a growth in the PPE in­dus­try and the man­u­fac­tur­ing of a range of sani­tis­ers.

Prop­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is al­so vi­tal mov­ing for­ward

Coos­al said the TTMA al­so con­tin­ues to work with agen­cies like ex­porTT to roll out the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive which would aid com­pa­nies in their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion dri­ve to at­tain mar­ket ac­cess op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“With­out cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, in to­day’s glob­alised en­vi­ron­ment, their goods and ser­vices can be de­barred from mar­ket en­try, es­pe­cial­ly to many ‘first world’ states,” she em­pha­sised.

Fur­ther, Coos­al said the TTMA has al­so part­nered with oth­er re­gion­al agen­cies to form the Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (CMA) which fo­cus­es on trade ad­vo­ca­cy, sec­tor de­vel­op­ment, labour and hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

She told the Busi­ness Guardian that the TTMA is al­so work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with the Po­lice Ser­vice to ad­dress il­lic­it trade that con­tin­ues to un­der­mine le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es.