Last week the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) ex­e­cut­ed its first phys­i­cal trade mis­sion in al­most two years to Guyana.

The South Amer­i­can coun­try is en­joy­ing an eco­nom­ic boom, as its bur­geon­ing oil and gas in­dus­try has start­ed com­ing in­to its own, mak­ing it an at­trac­tive mar­ket for new in­vest­ment.

How­ev­er, there have been ques­tions raised about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the coun­tries, based on com­ments made by promi­nent fig­ures in both coun­tries.

De­spite the run­ning com­men­tary, pres­i­dent of the TTMA Tri­cia Coos­al told the Busi­ness Guardian that the mis­sion to Guyana was a suc­cess.

Coos­al said: “The was seen to be suc­cess­ful on nu­mer­ous fronts. This mis­sion took 27 com­pa­nies (com­pris­ing over 40 del­e­gates) and rep­re­sent­ed the food and bev­er­age, print­ing and pack­ag­ing, chem­i­cals and con­struc­tion sec­tors to Guyana for phys­i­cal sem­i­nars, busi­ness to busi­ness meet­ings and site vis­its.

“Pre­sen­ta­tions were made by the Guyana Bu­reau of Stan­dards, Guyana Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion and the Guyana Cus­toms Au­thor­i­ty which gave in­sights in­to the roles of these agen­cies do­ing busi­ness in Guyana.”

Coos­al said the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the TTMA’s mem­bers were able to se­cure op­por­tu­ni­ties for their busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

She said: “As a mat­ter of fact, on­ly to­day we heard of some of our mem­bers se­cur­ing mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties for their goods in­to the Guyanese mar­ket, for oth­ers there are some great op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vest­ment, joint ven­ture op­er­a­tions and sourc­ing of ma­te­r­i­al from Guyana. We even had one com­pa­ny that was able to se­cure goods to be im­port­ed from Guyana to T&T such as flour, rice and oil.”

T&T’s lack of di­ver­si­ty has long been crit­i­cised, with Guyana’s vice pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo one of the most re­cent pub­lic voic­es re­mark­ing on T&T’s overde­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor. The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was quick to latch on­to his com­ments, as op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles took to Par­lia­ment to ques­tion T&T’s ef­forts to get trade routes es­tab­lished with the emerg­ing eco­nom­ic pow­er­house in Cari­com.

The TTMA pres­i­dent said, how­ev­er, based on the dis­cus­sions held last week, those paths were not on­ly be­ing ex­plored but be­ing tra­versed as well.

Coos­al said, “Sev­er­al T&T com­pa­nies have re­port­ed sign­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ments over the past few days since the con­clu­sion of the mis­sion with buy­ers met in busi­ness to busi­ness meet­ings. These deals will re­sult in ex­ports that be­gin to bear fruit in the com­ing weeks and months. Fur­ther­more, a few busi­ness deals for fu­ture part­ner­ships/ven­tures are be­ing looked at which came out of both site vis­its and meet­ings.”

Coos­al added, “It is ex­pect­ed that in the com­ing weeks, some T&T com­pa­nies will be re­turn­ing to Guyana for fur­ther dis­cus­sions and con­clu­sion of ne­go­ti­a­tions with re­gard to trade and sales.”

She stressed that de­spite the com­ments made, both coun­tries en­joyed a sig­nif­i­cant trade part­ner­ship.

“This coun­try en­joys a healthy eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship with Guyana. T&T has been a heavy im­porter of rice (brown and par­boiled) from Guyana over the years; oth­er ma­jor items of im­port from Guyana are sug­ar, wood items, co­conut wa­ter and some fin­ished prod­ucts. T&T ex­ports a lot of our goods in­to the Guyanese mar­ket, with the pri­ma­ry ar­eas be­ing food and bev­er­age and print­ing and pack­ag­ing sec­tor. It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture trade be­tween both coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor would progress with T&T com­pa­nies seek­ing to fur­ther grow their trade, in­vest­ment and sourc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties from Guyana’s very bright and ro­bust mar­ket. “

‘T&T a mas­ter with the oil and gas in­dus­try’

Pres­i­dent of the Guyana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Rafeek Khan hailed the im­por­tance of trade be­tween T&T and Guyana.

“Part­ner­ship be­tween both coun­tries that are ide­al­ly ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly po­si­tioned to work to­geth­er must re­alise the cru­cial role in fos­ter­ing di­a­logue, knowl­edge-shar­ing and learn­ing be­tween both na­tions and be­yond,” he said.

He added, “Guyana and Trinidad must work to­geth­er and in­vest more in strength­en­ing long-term ca­pac­i­ty, look­ing to gov­ern­ments, civ­il so­ci­ety and the pri­vate sec­tor to build col­lec­tive re­silience. One of the most im­me­di­ate av­enues is lever­ag­ing off the skills and com­pe­ten­cies of Trinidad’s work­force, whether it’s skilled and un­skilled labour­ers or pro­fes­sion­als.”

“Let us see how we can com­mon­ly build ca­pac­i­ty, Trinidad has been a mas­ter with the oil and gas in­dus­try clos­est to Guyana. I would love to see how we can build ca­pac­i­ty in terms of mak­ing busi­ness hap­pen.”

He point­ed to T&T’s fash­ion in­dus­try as po­ten­tial av­enue in­to the Guyanese mar­ket.

“You have shown the world, your beau­ti­ful gar­ments for your Car­ni­val, why not bring that to Guyana? Help us build some ca­pac­i­ty in terms of im­prov­ing our gar­ment in­dus­try that has been strug­gling for decades in fact it is on the verge of col­lapse. But right there in Trinidad you have some amaz­ing minds of cre­ativ­i­ty in the gar­ment in­dus­try, per­haps out­source some of your gar­ments to Guyana and bring some of our flavour to your Car­ni­val next year,” said the Khan.

Khan, how­ev­er, down­played the im­pact of the lo­cal con­tent bill and its ef­fect on po­ten­tial for­eign in­vest­ment in the South Amer­i­can state, as he not­ed that sev­er­al T&T com­pa­nies had al­ready be­come so firm­ly es­tab­lished in Guyana they had al­ready fall­en in line with most of the reg­u­la­tions.

“Those com­pa­nies would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from our lo­cal con­tent (bill) be­cause those com­pa­nies and their prod­ucts are even some­times a house­hold name in Guyana. Their em­ploy­ment some­times ex­ceeds 90 per cent, the man­age­ment ex­ceeds 75 per cent,” he said.

He how­ev­er ques­tioned the con­tin­ued use of non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers to lim­it the trade of cer­tain items be­tween some Cari­com states.

‘Man­u­fac­tur­ing a sig­nif­i­cant cog’

On Tues­day, Coos­al was re-elect­ed as TTMA pres­i­dent dur­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s an­nu­al meet­ing. She im­me­di­ate­ly an­nounced in­ten­tions to em­bark on trade mis­sions to Suri­name and Flori­da as well as con­firm­ing there would be a phys­i­cal Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) for the first time in two years.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, while ad­dress­ing the TTMA’s post-meet­ing we­bi­nar, not­ed the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor was seen as a sig­nif­i­cant cog in the roadmap to re­cov­ery.

The min­is­ter said: “The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor sub-com­mit­tee in its de­lib­er­a­tions, elicit­ed ex­ten­sive stake­hold­er in­put and con­sid­ered a broad spec­trum of pol­i­cy op­tions for ex­pan­sion to al­low the fur­ther ex­port of high-val­ue goods. This was seen as a cru­cial first step in build­ing much need­ed eco­nom­ic re­silience.

“I am pleased to state that we are well in­to phase two of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery. In this re­gard, the Gov­ern­ment, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor, is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a num­ber of strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions and ini­tia­tives to boost and en­hance re­silience and growth in busi­ness.”

Gopee-Scoon said while the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor had shown great re­silience and growth in the past year, the gov­ern­ment was work­ing to en­sure that small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es at­tached to the sec­tor could sim­i­lar­ly re­bound.