Nadaleen Singh

Venezuela is a po­ten­tial­ly lu­cra­tive mar­ket for T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers but CEO of Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) Kelvin Ma­habir has con­cerns about be­ing paid on time for goods sup­plied to that coun­try.

With T&T set to ex­port its sec­ond ship­ment of goods to the strug­gling South Amer­i­can na­tion with­in the next few weeks, Ma­habir told the T&T Guardian that large Venezue­lan mar­ket of 30.5 mil­lion peo­ple could boost NFM's ca­pac­i­ty to earn for­eign ex­change.

How­ev­er, even with of­fi­cials from Cor­po­raci�n Vene­zolana de Com­er­cio Ex­te­ri­or (Cor­povex) ex­pect­ed in the coun­try lat­er this month to ne­go­ti­ate for an­oth­er ship­ment of goods, he has con­cerns.

"The main prob­lem in trad­ing with Venezuela has al­ways been the dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting paid. The man­u­fac­tur­ers in Trinidad through the TTMA are await­ing the ar­rival of the of­fi­cials from Cor­povex to make arrange­ments for the next ship­ments. This is ex­pect­ed to hap­pen next week," he said.

In June, rice, frozen chick­en, ketchup, pow­dered milk, may­on­naise and pas­ta to­talling 68 tons was shipped to Venezuela . These prod­ucts came from lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers Arawak and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Vem­co Lim­it­ed, and Trinidad Par­boil Lim­it­ed/Old Mac Agro Sup­plies Lim­it­ed and was fol­lowed days lat­er by a ship­ment of prod­ucts from John Dick­in­son and Co (WI) Lim­it­ed; Na­tion­al Can­ners Lim­it­ed, NFM and Co­conut Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Lim­it­ed.

This fol­lowed sign­ing of an agree­ment be­tween the man­u­fac­tur­ers and Cor­povex to sup­ply the items to Venezuela through a US$50 mil­lion re­volv­ing fund. The agree­ment cov­ers an ini­tial three-month pe­ri­od and $26.9 mil­lion dol­lars worth of food and ba­sic house­hold items have al­ready been shipped to east­ern Venezuela.

Ma­habir said there are no plans for NFM set up op­er­a­tions in Venezuela, al­though he ac­knowl­eges he po­ten­tial of that mar­ket for the com­pa­ny.

"The po­ten­tial of the mar­ket due to the cur­rent short­ages is un­known but sig­nif­i­cant. How­ev­er, this may change in the fu­ture as their pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties im­prove and go back in­to full op­er­a­tion."

NFM's con­tri­bu­tion to the first ship­ments to Venezuela was two con­tain­er loads of goods.

Venezuela, T&T clos­est South Amer­i­can neigh­bour, has been dev­as­tat­ed by de­clin­ing oil prices. The coun­try de­pends on oil rev­enues for more than 95 per cent of its for­eign in­come and its re­serves have dwin­dled to US$20 bil­lion in re­cent months. An­nu­al in­fla­tion is es­ti­mat­ed at 141.5 per­cent– dou­ble the 2014 rate–and food costs rose 254.3 per ent last year, sur­pass­ing wage in­creas­es.

In an­oth­er near­by mar­ket, Ma­habir said NFM is await­ing li­cence ap­provals to move some of its prod­ucts in­to Ja­maica.

"We re­cent­ly ob­tained ap­proval for our tilapia feed and are await­ing ap­proval for our pet food prod­uct," he said.