The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is con­fi­dent it is well on its way of meet­ing its tar­get of dou­bling this coun­try’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 2025.

Apart from its nu­mer­ous we­bi­na­rs and trade mis­sions aimed at fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­creased trade, the TTMA has launched the first edi­tion of “Savour T&T,” a pub­li­ca­tion that cel­e­brates the vi­brant and dy­nam­ic lo­cal­food and bev­er­age sec­tor.

The cat­a­logue show­cas­es over 1,000 prod­ucts by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 home-grown en­ti­ties with the fea­tured items rang­ing from tra­di­tion­al sea­son­ings and condi­ments to mod­ern pack­aged snacks and bev­er­ages.

Dr Mahin­dra Ramesh Ramdeen, the TTMA’s CEO said such a pub­li­ca­tion is a vi­tal tool that would help in­crease non-en­er­gy ex­ports as he re­in­forced that the aim was to dou­ble the fig­ure of $3.5 bil­lion in 2019 to $7 bil­lion by 2025.

“We are close to that. COVID threw us back a bit but we have re­couped very well and in 2022 we did ex­ceed­ing­ly well and as the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance would have said, the non-en­er­gy sec­tor is lead­ing the way,” Ramdeen said as he spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at the launch of the cat­a­logue which took place at Queen’s Hall on Wednes­day night.

On the gen­e­sis of the cat­a­logue, Ramdeen ex­plained, “It came about when my pres­i­dent (of the TTMA) and the Min­is­ter (of Trade) went to a trade show in Chi­na and they saw a coun­try show­cas­ing its non-en­er­gy prod­ucts. The min­is­ter reached out to the TTMA and said we have world-class prod­ucts of high qual­i­ty so let’s put some­thing to­geth­er be­cause we don’t have a repos­i­to­ry of all the things that we pro­duce.

“So we iden­ti­fied the top 100 com­pa­nies in the food and bev­er­age sec­tor that are ex­port­ing al­ready or on the cusp of ex­port­ing and they just need­ed that ex­tra push to bring them to that lev­el in terms of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. We have a lot of our agro-processed food, a lot of the canned beans fea­tured for in­stance Vem­co and Na­tion­al Can­ners prod­ucts. Our large man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies, such as SM Jaleel, Blue Wa­ters, As­so­ci­at­ed Brands among many oth­ers are al­so fea­tured,” Ramdeen ex­plained.

He said the plan for the cat­a­logue is to have it avail­able in all T&T em­bassies and con­sulates, as well as pre­sent­ing it on trade mis­sions.

“The ob­jec­tive ob­vi­ous­ly is to get mar­ket ac­cess for our man­u­fac­tur­ers. It’s part of the thrust, it’s a tool that TTMA is de­vel­op­ing for our­selves to grow ex­ports and we are con­fi­dent we can dou­ble the ex­port fig­ure,” Ramdeen re­it­er­at­ed.

Ramdeen fur­ther not­ed that Savour T&T,which is a mix­ture of busi­ness­es ac­cord­ing to scale, can bridge the gap for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs); pro­vid­ing them with much need­ed ex­po­sure to gain in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.

“This mag­a­zine has many of the small play­ers and cot­tage in­dus­tries and we have a num­ber of busi­ness­es from To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly those that would have come to TIC and have read­ied them­selves for ex­port,” he said, not­ing that the pre­req­ui­site for be­ing fea­tured is that a busi­ness must ei­ther be ex­port­ing or demon­strat­ing readi­ness to do so.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who con­grat­u­lat­ed the TTMA on its achieve­ment said the mag­a­zine stands as a tes­ta­ment to this coun­try’s’s vi­brant culi­nary land­scape, adding that each prod­uct tells a “sto­ry of au­then­tic­i­ty and pride and demon­strates the in­ge­nu­ity and re­silience” of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Stat­ing that there are many crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors that can be as­cribed to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor’s suc­cess, Gopee-Scoon said four are note­wor­thy as she iden­ti­fied that man­u­fac­tur­ers have suc­cess­ful­ly utilised the re­gion­al mar­ket; tak­en ad­van­tage of trade agree­ments; lever­aged sup­port ex­tend­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and en­gaged in sig­nif­i­cant rein­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion.

She not­ed that in 1999 the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor’s (ex­clud­ing petro­chem­i­cals) GDP stood at TT$3.7 bil­lion. In 2023, its GDP has in­creased im­pres­sive­ly to TT$16.1 bil­lion.

“This is more than a 350 per cent in­crease,” Gopee-Scoon added.

Echo­ing sen­ti­ments that the TTMA re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the coun­try’s econ­o­my, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Roger Roach de­scribed the or­gan­i­sa­tion as the dri­ving force be­hind a vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty of food and bev­er­age mem­bers as he re­in­forced. T&T’s food and bev­er­age sec­tor not on­ly fu­els a thriv­ing lo­cal mar­ket but al­so show­cas­es the coun­try’s gas­tro­nom­ic iden­ti­ty glob­al­ly, said Roach.

Not­ing that in­no­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty serve as foun­da­tion­al pil­lars pro­pelling the growth of the sec­tor, Roach added that many com­pa­nies are ac­tive­ly em­brac­ing eco-friend­ly prac­tices such as sourc­ing in­gre­di­ents lo­cal­ly to and are adopt­ing pack­ag­ing so­lu­tions to min­imise en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

More­over, Roach said tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments have em­pow­ered busi­ness­es to el­e­vate food safe­ty stan­dards, stream­line pro­duc­tion process­es and ex­pand dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works both at home and abroad.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the TTMA’s sup­port ex­tends to nav­i­gat­ing in­tri­cate in­ter­na­tion­al trade reg­u­la­tions and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, en­sur­ing that prod­ucts meet strin­gent qual­i­ty stan­dards and ad­here to es­sen­tial food safe­ty pro­to­cols, there­by bol­ster­ing trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty among glob­al buy­ers.

Roach added that the TTMA con­tin­ues to be a strong ad­vo­cate for its man­u­fac­tur­ers, lob­by­ing Gov­ern­ment and oth­er statu­to­ry bod­ies on their be­half.

This, he said, en­sur­ers man­u­fac­tur­ers’ in­ter­ests are rep­re­sent­ed in pol­i­cy­mak­ing and reg­u­lar frame­work, fos­ter­ing a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for growth and sus­tain­abil­i­ty with­in the in­dus­try.

Chal­lenges still fac­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers

Crime con­tin­ues to hold the num­ber one spot as the ma­jor prob­lem fac­ing busi­ness­es. Apart from brazen rob­beries, Ramdeen said the cost to keep busi­ness­es safe con­tin­ues to rise.

He ex­plained that where the av­er­age su­per­mar­ket would have prob­a­bly ex­pend­ed around $15,000 on se­cu­ri­ty per month, that cost is now about $70,000, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion sur­veil­lance sys­tems, armed guards and oth­er items.

In out­lin­ing oth­er chal­lenges, the TTMA CEO said these con­tin­ue to range from the short­age of forex to peren­ni­al prob­lems at the port in hav­ing goods cleared on time.

Ramdeen said while sourc­ing for­eign ex­change in some in­stances, re­mains prob­lem­at­ic, the TTMA is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly and has for in­stance, part­nered with Ex­im­Bank where a fa­cil­i­ty has been cre­at­ed.

An­oth­er prob­lem Ramdeen said is ac­cess­ing suit­able mar­kets for ex­porters.

He said lo­cal while man­u­fac­tur­ers have sat­u­rat­ed a sig­nif­i­cant space in Cari­com there are how­ev­er, many op­por­tu­ni­ties es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to food se­cu­ri­ty.

“The heads of gov­ern­ment are talk­ing about feed­ing our­selves. So, we’re look­ing at that and lever­ag­ing up­on that ide­ol­o­gy to get ex­ports out­side there be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­though we don’t pro­duce all the raw ma­te­r­i­al that we need, we have the pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty to feed our­selves in the re­gion.

“We think we still have sig­nif­i­cant av­enues with­in the Cari­com and Latin Amer­i­can re­gion, and the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with us,” Ramdeen added.

Re­gard­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties as it per­tains to ease of busi­ness, Ramdeen ad­mit­ted that while there are still some chal­lenges in this re­gard, es­pe­cial­ly as it per­tains to red-tape and bu­reau­cra­cies, he felt as­sured that Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to work to ad­dress these is­sues.