Raphael John-Lall

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Emil Ramkissoon has said that the busi­ness group has set the am­bi­tious tar­get of dou­bling T&T’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports to TT$10.6 bil­lion by 2030.

“The TTMA has been try­ing to dou­ble ex­ports. We have been try­ing to grow the non-en­er­gy ex­port side of it. Last year and com­ing in­to this year, we de­cid­ed on a fig­ure to achieve by the year 2030, which is TT$10.6 bil­lion. I mean, we don’t know how at­tain­able it will be, but we are ask­ing for the Gov­ern­ment sup­port in help­ing us achieve this fig­ure.”

Ramkissoon spoke ear­li­er this month in a we­bi­nar host­ed by the Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit (TEDU) of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). The top­ic was “Ex­pand­ing T&T’s Non-En­er­gy Ex­ports: Op­por­tu­ni­ties and Chal­lenges.”

He spoke about dif­fer­ent strate­gic pil­lars to as­sist in this goal which in­cludes greater ac­cess to for­eign cur­ren­cy.

“First is im­proved ac­cess to for­eign ex­change. Yes, it will dig a lit­tle more in­to the Ex­im­bank and the Trea­sury, but with the tight­en­ing of the re­stric­tions, I think it is pos­si­ble.”

He al­so spoke about en­hanced trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion.

“The trade at­tach­es that were brought back to T&T when the gov­ern­ment changed, they were reap­point­ed. We have met with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, so that’s the lev­el of ad­vo­ca­cy we do at the TTMA. And right now, we are work­ing with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and the Min­istry of Trade to say, these are where we need trade at­tach­es in or­der to grow ex­ports from T&T.”

Be­cause of the work the TTMA is do­ing, he said non-en­er­gy ex­ports are grow­ing.

“We know a lot of our mem­bers do ex­ist in these parks for man­u­fac­tur­ing, but right now we still need ac­cess to these parks be­cause non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing, be­lieve it or not, is grow­ing. The SME sec­tor is grow­ing. They need space, they need help, they need to ac­cess these dif­fer­ent sys­tems un­der gov­ern­ment agen­cies to grow.”

He boast­ed that the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) which will be held from Ju­ly 9-11 will be their biggest to date with 400 ex­hibitors.

“It con­sists of both man­u­fac­tur­ers and ser­vice providers and re­gion­al part­ners. And a lot of the em­bassies have part­nered with us this year be­cause they re­alised TIC is re­al­ly the plat­form for the ul­ti­mate net­work­ing and see­ing where they could take our man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts to their coun­tries and get it go­ing through dif­fer­ent trade routes, us­ing the non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers, dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­tions, how we could work on par­tial scope agree­ments with the Gov­ern­ment.”

Ramkissoon said the TTMA ad­vo­cates for these types of agree­ments to en­sure their prod­ucts get in­to the glob­al mar­kets, not just the Cari­com mar­ket.

“Com­ing out of that, I just came back from Guyana yes­ter­day. The TTMA is on a trade mis­sion right now to Guyana and Suri­name. I couldn’t make it to the Suri­name leg of it, but the Guyana trade mis­sion, this has been the biggest trade mis­sion that the TTMA has em­barked on. We had over 64 par­tic­i­pants con­sist­ing of 38 com­pa­nies. And what you would find in the Guyana trade mis­sion is a lot of re­turn­ing com­pa­nies be­cause they find the val­ue in the work we do at the TTMA.”

Il­lic­it trade

Ramkissoon al­so crit­i­cised what he called the il­lic­it trade, prod­ucts that come in il­le­gal­ly in­to the coun­try that com­pete with lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods.

He said there are many il­lic­it trade prod­ucts com­ing through the back­door chan­nels of T&T and that the group does not know whether it is through the suit­case trade.

“I mean, we’re get­ting re­ports from a lot of our man­u­fac­tur­ers in....the al­co­hol sec­tor and the to­bac­co sec­tor, where you’re see­ing il­lic­it trade ris­ing. And a lot of this hap­pened be­cause the gov­ern­ment in­cre­assed the ex­cise tax to 100 per cent on lo­cal­ly pro­duced al­co­hol and to­bac­co. And right now, we’re still ad­vo­cat­ing for re­duc­tion in the tax.”

He added that the TTMA is work­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as well as oth­er state agen­cies to crack­down on coun­ter­feit prod­ucts com­ing il­le­gal­ly in­to the coun­try.

“We get a lot of in­tel from var­i­ous sources and we’re able to do some… coun­ter­feit busts, work­ing with the TTPS, Cus­toms and bor­der state agen­cies.”

SME di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Vivek Char­ran, who al­so spoke at the we­bi­nar, said that the path for­ward, es­pe­cial­ly for SMEs in re­tail, is one in which they must have some di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion com­po­nent of their busi­ness.

He added that there must be an el­e­ment of their busi­ness, a sub­sidiary of their busi­ness, that they should be able to di­ver­si­fy in­to.

“That would in­clude im­port sub­sti­tu­tion in whichev­er way, whether that be through light ma­chin­ery, whether that be through food pro­cess­ing or as­sem­bling. Al­so, the move­ment af­ter hav­ing done this, must be to­wards ex­port par­tic­u­lar­ly, let’s say, the Caribbean mar­ket, South Amer­i­can mar­ket.”

He al­so point­ed out that be­cause of the growth of the en­er­gy sec­tor by 2028, the coun­try will ex­pe­ri­ence greater lev­els of for­eign ex­change re­serves.

“That is go­ing to bring an im­me­di­ate change in terms of the amount of US dol­lars avail­able in the coun­try com­pared to how things have been be­fore, and pos­si­bly is go­ing to mean an in­crease in cred­it card lim­its and so on.”

Be­cause of this dy­namism in the econ­o­my, he said one of the re­sults of that is the con­tin­ued in­crease and de­mand for US dol­lars which at this point in time has nev­er been greater.

He ques­tioned the role of banks in the econ­o­my and how they are able to fi­nance the growth of the SME sec­tor and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“It’s a dif­fi­cult process, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause I can’t fig­ure out what are the roles of the com­mer­cial banks in T&T when it comes to the re­build­ing of our econ­o­my, or the com­mit­ment to help the econ­o­my con­tin­ue to evolve and grow.”

From his per­spec­tive, he said get­ting fi­nanc­ing for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion projects is very, very dif­fi­cult.

He al­so spoke about a meet­ing he held with the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) re­cent­ly.

“I drew that to the at­ten­tion of Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, which we had a meet­ing with, which is ask­ing them what they see as their role mov­ing for­ward. Is it to sup­port di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion? Is it to sup­port re­build­ing? Is it to sup­port SMEs and start-ups and so on that want to get in­to ex­port-re­lat­ed or man­u­fac­tur­ing-re­lat­ed? There wasn’t a di­rect an­swer.”

Char­ran said the po­si­tion from the bank­ing sec­tor is that the risk lev­el in T&T is quite high.

“Why is that so when many of the SMEs that I speak to are con­tin­u­ing to be able to pay their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to the bank, are not di­rect­ly in ar­rears, have huge li­a­bil­i­ties with the bank in a sense, but are able to pay those month­ly li­a­bil­i­ties.”

UWI econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein who al­so spoke dur­ing the we­bi­nar said the Min­is­ter of Trade Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj an­nounced a goal of US$5 bil­lion in­crease in non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 2030.

“The Min­istry did out­line a se­ries of steps that they will take to meet their tar­get. If they meet this tar­get, the T&T econ­o­my would have staved off a lot of pain, a lot of prob­lems. I have con­fi­dence that some­one like Ka­ma Ma­haraj who has been in the ex­port busi­ness for a very long time and who ex­ports prod­ucts all over the world, would have an idea of how to ex­port.”