Unilever Caribbean Lim­it­ed chair­man Pablo Gar­ri­do has blamed chal­lenges in the T&T econ­o­my for the com­pa­ny's "be­low ex­pec­ta­tions" per­for­mance for the pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30. In his re­view of Unilever's lat­est fi­nan­cial re­sults, Gar­ri­do said the econ­o­my in its largest mar­ket con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate.

"Sales were dis­ap­point­ing as cus­tomers and con­sumers ex­er­cised cau­tion dur­ing an ex­tend­ed elec­tion pe­ri­od which then car­ried over in­to pre-Bud­get anx­i­eties," he said. "The weak econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go and mod­est growth in the rest of the re­gion was not suf­fi­cient to coun­ter­act the neg­a­tive im­pact of the one off IT is­sues in­curred in our re-en­gi­neer­ing in Quar­ter 1."

Gar­ri­do said Unilever's third quar­ter rev­enues of -3.4 per cent, while be­low ex­pec­ta­tions was an im­prove­ment from June 2015. Prof­it af­ter tax fell to $28.8 mil­lion, down from $44.7 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous year.

He added: "Our out­look for the last quar­ter re­mains guard­ed as we con­tin­ue to re­cov­er from Q1."

He an­nounced that Lucy Walsh has start­ed the tran­si­tion to the role of man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and is work­ing along­side Tim Klein­benne who will be leav­ing the com­pa­ny at the end of the year to take up a new as­sign­ment.