Kirk Ram­per­sad

T&T is en­ter­ing 2026 with an eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty that feels odd­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry.

On pa­per, in­fla­tion is pro­ject­ed to re­main low and growth is ex­pect­ed to be mod­est. The IMF’s coun­try view puts pro­ject­ed re­al GDP growth for 2026 at 1.0 per cent and con­sumer price in­fla­tion at 1.5 per cent. Yet walk in­to any board­room, re­tail out­let or small ser­vice busi­ness and you will hear the same con­cerns: cus­tomers are cau­tious, loy­al­ty is frag­ile and switch­ing is faster than ever.

This is the para­dox of the mod­ern mar­ket. Sta­bil­i­ty does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to con­fi­dence. And in a coun­try where dig­i­tal ac­cess is now main­stream, rep­u­ta­tion does not trav­el slow­ly any­more.

Datare­por­tal es­ti­mates that at the start of 2025 there were 1.28 mil­lion in­ter­net users in T&T with in­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion at 84.7 per cent and mo­bile con­nec­tions equiv­a­lent to 135 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. In prac­ti­cal terms, most of your cus­tomers now car­ry a com­par­i­son en­gine, a com­plaint chan­nel and a mega­phone in their pock­et.

So if 2026 is go­ing to be a break­through year for lo­cal en­ter­prise, the win­ning ad­van­tage will not be a loud­er cam­paign or a pret­ti­er lo­go. It will be trust, en­gi­neered de­lib­er­ate­ly and de­liv­ered con­sis­tent­ly.

For years, we treat­ed trust as some­thing you “had” if you were known, es­tab­lished or big. To­day trust is some­thing you “earn” through every­day proof. Not your mis­sion state­ment. Not your an­niver­sary ad. Proof.

Cus­tomers mea­sure proof in five ways:

1. Re­li­a­bil­i­ty—you do what you said, when you said;

2. Trans­paren­cy—pric­ing, terms, time­lines and af­ter-sales sup­port are clear;

3. Re­spon­sive­ness—prob­lems are ac­knowl­edged quick­ly and re­solved with­out the­atre;

4. Se­cu­ri­ty—you pro­tect cus­tomer da­ta and pay­ment in­for­ma­tion like it is your own;

5. Fair val­ue—the ex­pe­ri­ence match­es the price, even when bud­gets are tight;

Those prin­ci­ples sound sim­ple. They are al­so where many firms leak rev­enue silent­ly, month af­ter month.

This mat­ters in an econ­o­my where growth is steady but not ex­plo­sive. The Cen­tral Bank’s re­port­ing points to non-en­er­gy ac­tiv­i­ty as a key dri­ver of do­mes­tic growth while en­er­gy out­put re­mains con­strained by nat­ur­al gas sup­ply is­sues even as projects aim to boost en­er­gy out­put. Mod­est growth en­vi­ron­ments re­ward ef­fi­cien­cy, re­ten­tion and op­er­a­tional dis­ci­pline. In oth­er words, if the mar­ket is not ex­pand­ing quick­ly, you can­not af­ford to keep los­ing cus­tomers through pre­ventable fric­tion.

Most mar­ket­ing in T&T still be­haves as if the goal is to “get cus­tomers”. But the re­al 2026 ques­tion is: can you keep them?

Re­ten­tion is not glam­orous. It is not al­ways vis­i­ble. But it is mea­sur­able, bank­able and scal­able.

Here is the strate­gic move: treat cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence as a rev­enue sys­tem, not a ser­vice func­tion.

When the ex­pe­ri­ence is de­signed well, you re­duce churn, low­er com­plaint costs and build

re­fer­ral mo­men­tum. That is the trust div­i­dend.

1) Make your cus­tomer jour­ney a man­aged as­set

Map the jour­ney from dis­cov­ery to pur­chase to sup­port to re­peat busi­ness. Iden­ti­fy the “mo­ments that mat­ter” where cus­tomers de­cide whether you are worth re­turn­ing to.

For a re­tail­er it may be stock avail­abil­i­ty, ex­change pol­i­cy and check­out speed.

For a con­trac­tor it may be quot­ing ac­cu­ra­cy, sched­ule ad­her­ence and site clean­li­ness.

For a pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice it may be re­sponse times, clar­i­ty of de­liv­er­ables and billing trans­paren­cy.

Then as­sign own­ers, tar­gets and re­port­ing. If no one owns the jour­ney, the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences your or­gan­i­sa­tion’s in­ter­nal chaos as a brand.

2) Turn ser­vice in­to da­ta, then turn da­ta in­to ac­tion

You do not need a multi­na­tion­al bud­get to be da­ta led. You need the dis­ci­pline to cap­ture three types of in­for­ma­tion con­sis­tent­ly:

• De­mand sig­nals: what cus­tomers ask for, search for or re­quest re­peat­ed­ly

• Fric­tion points: where de­lays, er­rors or com­plaints spike

• Re­ten­tion sig­nals: re­peat pur­chase pat­terns, drop offs and re­fer­ral be­hav­iour

The point is not dash­boards for show. The point is de­ci­sions. If you see a pat­tern of late de­liv­er­ies on a par­tic­u­lar route, fix lo­gis­tics. If cus­tomers keep ask­ing the same ques­tions, rewrite your prod­uct pages and train staff. If your high­est val­ue cus­tomers are leav­ing, do not run a give­away. Call them.

3) Build trust through pay­ment, pri­va­cy and pol­i­cy clar­i­ty

As more com­merce shifts on­line, trust will in­creas­ing­ly be de­cid­ed at check­out. Cus­tomers will aban­don pur­chas­es if pay­ment feels un­cer­tain or poli­cies feel hid­den. The dig­i­tal mar­ket in T&T is large enough now that this is not a niche con­cern. With in­ter­net us­age around 84.7 per cent, the de­fault ex­pec­ta­tion is con­ve­nience.

Your 2026 readi­ness check­list should in­clude:

• Clear re­fund and ex­change terms in plain lan­guage;

• Vis­i­ble cus­tomer sup­port chan­nels with re­sponse time ex­pec­ta­tions;

• Se­cure pay­ment op­tions and staff train­ing on fraud aware­ness; and

• Min­i­mal da­ta col­lec­tion, with a sim­ple ex­pla­na­tion of what you col­lect and why.

Trust is built when cus­tomers feel safe, in­formed and re­spect­ed.

We of­ten speak about “di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion” as if it is a slo­gan. Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is ca­pa­bil­i­ty. It means more firms that can ex­port, meet stan­dards, de­liv­er con­sis­tent­ly and com­pete be­yond our shores.

Re­cent of­fi­cial re­port­ing un­der­scores why this mat­ters. The Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2025 notes a con­trac­tion in ex­ports to Cari­com over the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ing June 2025 com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year. Whether your busi­ness is di­rect­ly in­volved in

re­gion­al trade or not, those move­ments are a re­minder that ex­ter­nal mar­kets are com­pet­i­tive and per­for­mance dri­ven.

A prac­ti­cal na­tion­al play­book for firms and pol­i­cy­mak­ers

For busi­ness­es: build ex­port grade op­er­a­tions even if you are not ex­port­ing yet.

Ex­port readi­ness is not on­ly about ship­ping. It is about re­peat­able qual­i­ty, doc­u­men­ta­tion, cus­tomer sup­port and brand con­sis­ten­cy. A com­pa­ny that can sat­is­fy a buy­er in Bar­ba­dos can usu­al­ly sat­is­fy a buy­er in Barataria.

Start with:

• Stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures for pro­duc­tion and ser­vice de­liv­ery

• Doc­u­ment­ed qual­i­ty checks and com­plaint res­o­lu­tion work­flows

• A dig­i­tal cat­a­logue with ac­cu­rate specs, pric­ing log­ic and lead times

• Pack­ag­ing, la­belling and trace­abil­i­ty that can pass scruti­ny

For pol­i­cy­mak­ers and in­sti­tu­tions: re­duce the cost of trust.

When trust is ex­pen­sive, on­ly large firms can af­ford it. Na­tion­al progress re­quires more SMEs to be­come cred­i­ble at scale.

That means prac­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tions:

• Faster stan­dards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­ways and clear­er guid­ance for SMEs

• Ex­port fi­nanc­ing and in­sur­ance sup­port that is ac­ces­si­ble and well com­mu­ni­cat­ed

• Shared ser­vices for train­ing in cy­ber hy­giene, dig­i­tal pay­ments and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence

• Trade da­ta and mar­ket in­tel­li­gence made eas­i­er to use, not just avail­able

If the econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to grow mod­est­ly, then pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness be­come the

true growth levers.

Mar­ket­ing lead­ers should treat 2026 as the year to re­bal­ance ef­fort away from con­stant pro­mo­tion and to­ward ex­pe­ri­ence per­for­mance. Cam­paigns will still mat­ter. Sto­ry­telling will still mat­ter. But the sto­ry must match the lived ex­pe­ri­ence.

A mod­ern brand in T&T is not built in a stu­dio. It is built in de­liv­ery time­lines, What­sApp re­sponse speeds, the ac­cu­ra­cy of your in­voice and the way you re­solve a prob­lem when the cus­tomer is up­set.

That is where the trust div­i­dend is earned.

Here is the clos­ing chal­lenge for every CEO and en­tre­pre­neur read­ing this: in 2026, do not ask on­ly “how do we sell more?” Ask “what would make cus­tomers choose us again, with­out be­ing per­suad­ed?”

If we can an­swer that hon­est­ly, then growth be­comes less about chas­ing de­mand and more about de­serv­ing it. And that is how T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty pro­gress­es, not just through op­ti­mism, but through op­er­a­tional cred­i­bil­i­ty that com­pounds year af­ter year.