Raphael John-Lall

T&T is Cu­ba’s main trad­ing part­ner in Cari­com and there is room for more busi­ness part­ner­ships be­tween the two coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to Pres­i­dent of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Mark Edghill.

“At present, T&T is Cu­ba’s largest Cari­com trad­ing part­ner, record­ing some 80 per cent of the re­gion­al trade-in-goods. We are op­ti­mistic that by the time our Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries has con­clud­ed, we would have laid the foun­da­tion for a sim­i­lar and rec­i­p­ro­cal fig­ure for the trade-in-ser­vices for both our coun­tries,” Edghill said.

Edghill said this while giv­ing open­ing re­marks at a We­bi­nar en­ti­tled “Do­ing Busi­ness With the World Se­ries” last Wednes­day host­ed by the TTC­SI.

Do­ing busi­ness in the Cuban con­struc­tion in­dus­try was the top­ic of the We­bi­nar and the TTC­SI said there are two oth­er we­bi­na­rs on do­ing busi­ness in Cu­ba which the or­gan­i­sa­tion will host.

He spoke about op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Cuban con­struc­tion sec­tor for lo­cal com­pa­nies.

“To­day we will hear from the ex­perts and pro­fes­sion­als on en­ter­ing and do­ing busi­ness in the Cuban mar­ket as well as learn about the op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist and for this, we will hear from the ex­perts in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

“As many of you may know, Cu­ba’s con­struc­tion in­dus­try has been boom­ing in re­cent years, fu­elled by a grow­ing econ­o­my and an in­creas­ing de­mand for hous­ing, in­fra­struc­ture, and tourism-re­lat­ed projects and the in­dus­try is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to grow in the com­ing years.”

He added that one of the key fac­tors dri­ving the growth of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try in Cu­ba is the coun­try’s unique ar­chi­tec­ture and cul­tur­al her­itage.

“Many projects in Cu­ba are fo­cused on pre­serv­ing and restor­ing his­toric build­ings, such as colo­nial-era fortress­es, church­es, and oth­er land­marks.

“This has cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for ar­chi­tects, en­gi­neers, and con­struc­tion firms to show­case their ex­per­tise in pre­serv­ing his­toric build­ings while al­so meet­ing mod­ern con­struc­tion spec­i­fi­ca­tions.”

An­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try in Cu­ba Edghill point­ed to is the fo­cus on sus­tain­able and eco-friend­ly con­struc­tion prac­tices.

“With the in­creas­ing con­cern for the en­vi­ron­ment, there is a grow­ing de­mand for green build­ings, which use re­new­able en­er­gy sources, re­duce wa­ter con­sump­tion, and min­imise waste. Cu­ba has em­braced this trend, and many con­struc­tion projects are be­ing de­signed with sus­tain­abil­i­ty in mind.”

Edghill al­so said SMEs are crit­i­cal to the re­build­ing and re-strength­en­ing of T&T’s and Cu­ba’s re­spec­tive economies, pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and gen­er­at­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty to keep the en­gine of growth hum­ming along at a steady pace.

“One im­por­tant step we at TTC­SI have tak­en to sup­port SMEs is to cre­ate a Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Por­tal.

“This por­tal makes it pos­si­ble for T&T’s ser­vices sec­tor firms to be seen by and make con­nec­tions with ser­vices sec­tor firms in oth­er coun­tries and is a crit­i­cal pil­lar sup­port­ing our Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries.”

Fur­ther busi­ness talks

TTC­SI CEO Vashti Guyadeen told Sun­day Busi­ness that Wednes­day’s ses­sion was the ini­tial ses­sion of a three-part we­bi­nar se­ries on con­duct­ing busi­ness in Cu­ba fo­cused on the con­struc­tion sec­tor, of­fer­ing an overview of best prac­tices in Cu­ba while al­so aim­ing to gen­er­ate in­ter­est in part­ner­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties.

She said sub­se­quent ses­sions will delve fur­ther in­to how to en­ter the Cuban mar­ket.

Giv­ing an overview of the Wednes­day’s we­bi­nar, she said it was dis­cussed that the TTC­SI should com­pile a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the Trade and Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion Agree­ment be­tween Cari­com and the Cuban Gov­ern­ment, specif­i­cal­ly ex­pand­ing on Ar­ti­cle 15 Clause 1 (iii) of the Agree­ment in co­op­er­a­tion with sis­ter Coali­tions of Ser­vices In­dus­tries with­in the Caribbean.

“As CEO of the TTC­SI, the goal is to es­tab­lish chan­nels for joint ven­tures and col­lab­o­ra­tion, with a com­mit­ment to a sus­tained ef­fort rather than one-off events, as pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed in the ‘Do­ing Busi­ness with the World’ se­ries,” she said.