T&T’s trade sur­plus has in­creased by 145 per cent from $ 19.5 bil­lion to $47.6 bil­lion over the pe­ri­od 2021 to 2022, which shows great strength and re­silience.

This is ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon who de­tailed the fig­ur­ers in her re­cent bud­get con­tri­bu­tion which took place in Par­lia­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, to­tal ex­ports in­creased by 54 per cent from $58.3 bil­lion to $89.1 bil­lion, adding that lo­cal prod­ucts were now in 143 mar­kets world-wide.

Re­gard­ing en­er­gy ex­ports, Gopee-Scoon said these in­creased by 68 per cent from $42.7 bil­lion to $71.2 bil­lion as she al­so not­ed that non-en­er­gy ex­ports in­creased by 15 per cent from $15.6 bil­lion to $17.9 bil­lion. (Ex­clud­ing petro­chem­i­cals such as methanol, urea and am­mo­nia).

The min­is­ter al­so paid ku­dos to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor which she stat­ed demon­strat­ed stel­lar per­for­mance, not­ing that it showed ex­cep­tion­al­ly strong GDP growth in 2022 of 6.1 per cent, com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“When we look at the break­down the main dri­ver of this per­for­mance is a 31.7 per cent in­crease in the food, bev­er­age and to­bac­co sec­tors. These sec­tors are ex­pect­ed to grow a fur­ther 10.5 per cent in 2023. The tex­tile, cloth­ing, leather and wood, pa­per and print­ing sec­tors in­creased by 15.8 per cent,” Gopee-Scoon said, as she em­pha­sised that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion was about in­creas­ing rev­enue, in­creas­ing ex­ports and in­creas­ing out­put in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

Busi­ness­es are al­so do­ing well as the min­is­ter fur­ther not­ed, that com­pa­nies were di­ver­si­fy­ing with tra­di­tion­al re­tail­ers en­ter­ing the sec­tor and ex­ist­ing ones ex­pand­ing their prod­uct of­fer­ings and in­vest­ing in new prod­uct lines, ma­chin­ery and equip­ment.

More­so, there’s en­cour­ag­ing in­ter­est from young man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“We have a wave of young and new man­u­fac­tur­ers, who we are pleased to sup­port through the myr­i­ad of in­cen­tives—fi­nan­cial and non-fi­nan­cial, and in par­tic­u­lar through trade mis­sions – all of them suc­cess­ful­ly,” Gopee-Scoon said.

On new man­u­fac­tur­ing ini­tia­tives she stat­ed that to bol­ster and ad­vance the sec­tor, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance an­nounced two new ini­tia­tives; the Green Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ini­tia­tive and the Ex­port Sales of Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pa­nies: Busi­ness Levy Charge.

In ear­ly fis­cal 2024, the Trade Min­istry will launch the Green Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ini­tia­tive (GMI) in the amount of $5 Mil­lion.

“The GMI will large­ly as­sist all (small, medi­um and large) man­u­fac­tur­ers in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor with adopt­ing or im­prov­ing green man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She said green man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices in­clud­ed the re­duc­tion of pol­lu­tants dur­ing op­er­a­tions; de­creas­es in green­house gas emis­sions; min­imi­sa­tion and re­cy­cling of waste ma­te­ri­als and the pro­duc­tion of eco-friend­ly pack­ag­ing and biodegrad­able prod­ucts.

This, the min­is­ter said, would re­duce the neg­a­tive im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment, im­prove re­source util­i­sa­tion and in­crease com­pre­hen­sive ben­e­fits through­out all stages of the prod­uct life­cy­cle, adding that it was al­so aimed at re­duc­ing T&T’s car­bon foot­print and there­fore; sig­nalled the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal preser­va­tion and cli­mate goals.

The Green Man­u­fac­tur­ing ini­tia­tive will com­prise three com­po­nents:

• En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Au­dit/As­sess­ment;

• Green­ing of Man­u­fac­tur­ing Im­ple­men­ta­tion Grant and;

•  Train­ing and Green Up­skilling Staff.

Re­gard­ing trade mis­sions, Gopee-Scoon said these have been al­so been fruit­ful in grow­ing ex­ports.

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ex­porTT con­duct­ed mis­sions to Cu­raçao; Ja­maica; Grena­da; the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic; Colom­bia; Suri­name and St Lu­cia in fis­cal 2023.

As a re­sult of T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at these events, 216 com­pa­nies ben­e­fit­ed from over 1,500 busi­ness-to-busi­ness meet­ings and re­alised ex­port or­ders.

In fis­cal 2024, Gopee-Scoon stat­ed that it is the strate­gic in­ten­tion of the TTMA, sup­port­ed by her min­istry, to con­duct at least ten trade mis­sions in­clud­ing to Guyana, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da; Be­lize; Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic; St Vin­cent; Cu­ra­cao; Suri­name as well as ex­tra-re­gion­al des­ti­na­tions such as Mi­a­mi; Cana­da; and Pana­ma.

A mis­sion is planned for Ghana in March 2024 to fur­ther iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties fol­low­ing the vis­it of His Roy­al Majesty Otum­fuo Os­ei Tu­tu II of Ghana to T&T from Ju­ly 30 to Au­gust 5.

An­oth­er part of Gov­ern­ment’s tar­get­ed ap­proach to ex­port de­vel­op­ment is the cre­ation of new op­por­tu­ni­ties through ex­pand­ed mar­ket ac­cess.

These in­clude ne­go­ti­a­tion of new trade agree­ments; ex­pan­sion of ex­ist­ing trade agree­ments to de­vel­op glob­al link­ages; and re­moval of bar­ri­ers to trade for ex­porters.

On par­tial scope trade agree­ment with Chile the min­is­ter de­tailed, “We have con­clud­ed four rounds of ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Trinidad and To­ba­go-Chile Par­tial Scope Agree­ment. The fifth and fi­nal round of ne­go­ti­a­tions would be held in De­cem­ber 2023.

“The agree­ment we hope, will be signed in 2024 on the 60th an­niver­sary of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween Chile and T&T and will pro­vide this coun­try’s ex­porters with pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to a mar­ket of 19.5 mil­lion con­sumers.”

T&T will al­so com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions for a Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment with Cu­ra­cao in the sec­ond quar­ter of fis­cal 2024.

The agree­ment will pro­vide ad­di­tion­al pref­er­en­tial mar­ket ac­cess to a new mar­ket with­in the Caribbean.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Gopee-Scoon said T&T as part of Cari­com is seek­ing to ex­pand the ex­ist­ing Cari­com—Colom­bia Agree­ment on Trade, Eco­nom­ic and Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion, to se­cure pref­er­en­tial mar­ket ac­cess for an ad­di­tion­al 308 prod­ucts in­to Colom­bia, as she not­ed that ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try has al­so re­in­forced the com­mer­cial ar­chi­tec­ture for in­creas­ing ex­ports.

In fis­cal 2024, the Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er the ap­point­ment of ad­di­tion­al com­mer­cial of­fi­cers to serve those man­u­fac­tur­ers in­ter­est­ed in do­ing busi­ness in the Asian and African mar­kets.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trade Min­is­ter, growth in mar­ket share with­in tra­di­tion­al and non-tra­di­tion­al mar­kets was al­so achieved.

She cit­ed that ex­ports to tra­di­tion­al part­ners such as the US in­creased by 87 per cent be­tween 2019 and 2022; while ex­ports to non-tra­di­tion­al mar­kets such as Ghana and Spain al­so in­crease by 280 per cent and 21 per cent re­spec­tive­ly in 2022 com­pared to 2019.

In ad­di­tion, trade with Fin­land in­creased from $306,386 in 2019 to $321,604,901.

Not­ing that the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to demon­strate re­silience, Gopee-Scoon said the non-en­er­gy sec­tor to­day is more vi­brant, main­tain­ing that busi­ness­es, both in the man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices sec­tors, con­tin­ue to grow and are ma­jor cat­a­lysts of eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.

She said the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to trans­form T&T in­to a new so­ci­ety and new econ­o­my by adopt­ing a strate­gic and tar­get­ed ap­proach to de­vel­op­ing the eco­nom­ic space for in­vest­ment; set­ting the reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment; build­ing the hu­man re­sources to sup­port the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust; grow­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices sec­tors; im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness; and em­pow­er­ing con­sumers with the over­all ob­jec­tive of build­ing ca­pac­i­ty for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and growth.