The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), is com­mend­ing Gov­ern­ment for its most re­cent ac­tions to cur­tail the spread of COVID-19 in this coun­try—name­ly, the fur­ther re­stric­tion of move­ment of large swathes of the pop­u­la­tion deemed “non-es­sen­tial”.

And the As­so­ci­a­tion cur­rent­ly is in the process of sup­ply­ing gov­ern­ment with a list of the busi­ness­es among its mem­ber­ship, which can clas­si­fy as “es­sen­tial” and “non-es­sen­tial” and need spe­cial al­lowances dur­ing the pe­ri­od of re­stric­tion.

Yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that from mid­night on Sun­day (March 29) to April 15, cit­i­zens who are clas­si­fied as “non-es­sen­tial” will be re­quired to stay at home.

In a news re­lease, the TTMA ob­serves that such height­ened mea­sures will have a di­rect im­pact on trade and the ex­port sec­tor but ac­knowl­edges that the bur­den of the coro­n­avirus’ eco­nom­ic im­pact much shared by all.

The full text of the TTMA’s state­ment, fol­lows…

TTMA’S RE­SPONSE TO ES­SEN­TIAL SER­VICES LIST

PORT-OF-SPAIN       The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) com­mends the gov­ern­ment on its ac­tion tak­en to com­bat the spread of Covid-19. The TTMA would al­so like to thank the health care pro­fes­sion­als and their fam­i­lies who are shar­ing the risk and sac­ri­fice for all of us at this time.  

The TTMA ac­knowl­edges the list of es­sen­tial ser­vices as de­tailed by the Gov­ern­ment at the Me­dia Con­fer­ence to­day (27th March) and rec­og­nizes the im­pact that such mea­sures will have on trade and ex­port. 

The re­sult of the cur­tail­ment will be an ob­vi­ous re­duc­tion in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and that will of course neg­a­tive­ly im­pact pro­duc­tion and ex­port ca­pac­i­ties. It is a bur­den that we will all have to share. 

De­spite the present cir­cum­stances how­ev­er, the TTMA con­tin­ues on it mis­sion and will find in­no­v­a­tive ways to sup­port its mem­ber­ship to dou­ble ex­ports over the next 5 years and cer­tain­ly when we en­ter a pe­ri­od of re­cov­ery as I know we will. We must re­main pos­i­tive. 

The TTMA sup­ports the ini­tia­tives and ac­tions of the Min­istry of Health and sup­ports the ef­forts to pri­or­i­tize health and lives.  

The TTMA is cur­rent­ly col­lat­ing a list of its mem­bers to sub­mit to Gov­ern­ment—which iden­ti­fies es­sen­tial busi­ness­es and those non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es—that need or re­quire spe­cial al­lowances. These will in­clude but not be lim­it­ed to al­lowances for main­te­nance of equip­ment, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and for re­ceiv­ing con­tain­ers on route, dur­ing the pe­ri­od of re­stric­tions. 

Busi­ness­es that have been in­clud­ed in the list, as well as those who have been omit­ted, must be pre­pared to spread their cash flow over the next few months with re­cessed rev­enues, in or­der to sur­vive in the short term. The sit­u­a­tion re­mains flu­id and the TTMA con­tin­ues to keep work with the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure busi­ness may con­tin­ue at some rea­son­able lev­el, for their own sur­viv­abil­i­ty and that of the econ­o­my.

The TTMA of­fices will be closed but we re­main in op­er­a­tion re­mote­ly. Con­tact can be made through the fol­low­ing means:

1) Emails – list­ed on TTMA’s web­site, www.ttma.com

2) Face­book – Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion