Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, has pre­sent­ed two new co­coa stan­dards to The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) which were de­vel­oped by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS), in­tend­ed to im­prove the qual­i­ty of lo­cal­ly pro­duced co­coa beans.

The han­dover took place at The UWI dur­ing the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre’s (CRC) An­nu­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Sym­po­sium.

Ac­cord­ing to Gopee-Scoon, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing down­stream agro-pro­cess­ing as a form of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

She not­ed that co­coa is of con­sid­er­able eco­nom­ic im­por­tance as it gen­er­ates ex­port rev­enues, can cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment and fa­cil­i­tate the growth of new in­dus­try.

Bench­mark­ing in the co­coa in­dus­try, she added, and ap­pli­ca­tion of stan­dards will un­doubt­ed­ly strength­en our com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Cit­ing sub­stan­tial work be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op the fine and flavour co­coa in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Clarence Ramb­harat in­di­cat­ed that con­ver­gence of the var­i­ous com­po­nents and the ef­forts of stake­hold­ers in­volved in the co­coa in­dus­try was re­quired for the sec­tor’s growth.

The stan­dards, which were ini­ti­at­ed by the CRC, will pro­mote the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of the lo­cal co­coa in­dus­try, en­hance its com­pet­i­tive­ness and im­prove ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

The stan­dards - TTS 646:2019 and TTS 647:2019 were de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Re­search Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, the Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the CRC.

The en­ti­ties pro­vid­ed key in­puts in­to the stan­dards which spec­i­fy the re­quire­ments for sam­pling, test meth­ods, clas­si­fi­ca­tion, pack­ag­ing and mark­ing for co­coa beans.

Their ap­pli­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to not on­ly pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the qual­i­ty pa­ra­me­ters of lo­cal­ly pro­duced co­coa, but al­so fa­cil­i­tate the dri­ve to­wards na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of co­coa qual­i­ty; and sup­port the es­tab­lish­ment of a sus­tain­able, rec­og­nized brand for Trinidad and To­ba­go co­coa.

Da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) in­di­cate that an es­ti­mat­ed TT$30 mil­lion in co­coa was ex­port­ed for the pe­ri­od 2016 – 2018 (TT$9.4 mil­lion in 2016, TT$10.8 mil­lion in 2017 & TT$ 9.7 in 2018) while TT$ 235.6 mil­lion in choco­lates was ex­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od (TT $66 mil­lion in 2016, TT $96 mil­lion in 2017 and TT $ 73.6 mil­lion in 2018).