GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Cab­i­net has ap­proved a TT$50 mil­lion ex­port boost­er ini­tia­tive for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, the ob­jec­tive of which is to pro­mote ex­ports of man­u­fac­tured goods.

At the launch yes­ter­day, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said man­u­fac­tur­ing re­mains im­por­tant and dy­nam­ic in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

She added it is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the coun­try’s GDP, a net for­eign ex­change earn­er and a ma­jor em­ploy­er and with over 52,000 work­ers.

The min­is­ter not­ed that on av­er­age the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor has ex­port­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$3 bil­lion worth of goods an­nu­al­ly.

Gopee-Scoon ex­plained that the Trade Min­istry in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ex­porTT and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) de­vel­oped this ini­tia­tive to in­crease the ex­port val­ue of man­u­fac­tured goods by ten per cent at the end of the fis­cal year 2020/2021 from TT$2.7 bil­lion in 2019 and to dou­ble that to TT$5.4 bil­lion by 2024.

The ini­tia­tive is made up of 16 mea­sures un­der three broad strate­gic ar­eas in­clud­ing ex­port pro­mo­tion (ac­cel­er­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion), ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing.

Gopee-Scoon said steps to es­tab­lish a pres­ence in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets in­clude trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion of­fices, es­tab­lish­ment of trade at­tachés, mar­ket in­tel­li­gence, vir­tu­al trade mis­sions, trans­lat­ing ser­vices, in-mar­ket pro­mo­tion, vir­tu­al ex­po plat­form and sec­tor pro­files.

“T&T cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­ences very good suc­cess from its trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion of­fice in Cu­ba. Gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate TT $3 mil­lion for a trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion of­fice to pro­mote ex­port growth in Pana­ma, Cos­ta Ri­ca and neigh­bour­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries.

“The Cen­tral Amer­i­can mar­ket of­fers sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for lo­cal ex­porters. The re­gion’s pur­chas­ing pow­er is in ex­cess of US$270 bil­lion and has a com­bined mar­ket size of over 51 mil­lion con­sumers,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She said trade at­tach­es which are trade ex­perts at­tached to the T&T Em­bassy are be­ing con­sid­ered for mar­kets such as Ja­maica and Guyana to fur­ther im­prove mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion.

The min­is­ter said these mar­kets to­geth­er with the US have been the top mar­kets of in­ter­est among lo­cal ex­porters for the last three years.

Re­gard­ing in-mar­ket pro­mo­tion, Gopee-Scoon said it is im­por­tant that ex­porters have a sus­tained mar­ket pres­ence to con­tin­u­ous­ly gen­er­ate ex­port rev­enue.

She added that ex­porTT will al­lo­cate $1.5 mil­lion to pro­vide the in-mar­ket pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­i­ties which in­clude shelf stock­ing fees, ship­ping of sam­ples for tast­ings and in-store pro­mo­tions.

This ini­tia­tive will tar­get 20 com­pa­nies.

A vir­tu­al ex­po plat­form will al­so be es­tab­lished for con­tin­u­ous use across mul­ti­ple sec­tors aimed at pro­vid­ing buy­ers with 24/7 ac­cess to lo­cal ex­porters.

Gopee-Scoon said to en­sure that T&T’s prod­ucts qual­i­fy for en­try in their in­tend­ed mar­kets, $2 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to as­sist ex­porters im­prove their prod­uct la­belling and re­duce the cost of prod­uct test­ing ser­vices.

Fur­ther, she said to fast-track the trans­for­ma­tion of po­ten­tial lo­cal busi­ness in­to first-time ex­porters, $2.2 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to an ex­port ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme at ex­porTT.