GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

If T&T is to fur­ther pro­pel the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor on its up­ward tra­jec­to­ry, the crit­i­cal ques­tion to be asked is how can this coun­try take ad­van­tage of the chang­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape, while con­tin­u­ing to pur­sue new op­por­tu­ni­ties to bol­ster re­silience, agili­ty and growth.

Mak­ing the state­ments was Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who spoke at the Pres­i­dent’s Din­ner and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny, which was host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) on Tues­day night.

In cit­ing sta­tis­tics, the min­is­ter not­ed that ac­cord­ing to the Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2023, the out­put of T&T’s non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor (ie man­u­fac­tur­ing less pe­tro­le­um and chem­i­cal prod­ucts) stood at $15.7 bil­lion in 2022.

She added that the food and bev­er­age sub-sec­tor was one of the main con­trib­u­tors to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor’s per­for­mance, with an out­put of $ 12.6 bil­lion in 2022.

The min­is­ter al­so cit­ed the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum, which not­ed that glob­al in­dus­tries were un­der­go­ing trans­for­ma­tive shifts as a re­sult of four key mega­trends in­clud­ing sup­ply chain is­sues, tech­nol­o­gy in­te­gra­tion and chang­ing peo­ple dy­nam­ics, cli­mate change and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

On the is­sue of sup­ply chains, Gopee-Scoon said geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions with re­sul­tant dis­rup­tive threats have forced firms to re­think their sup­ply chains.

“We are still feel­ing the ef­fects of sup­ply chain chal­lenges that be­gan in 2020 with the pan­dem­ic and were fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by oth­er glob­al events in­clud­ing the on­go­ing war be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine and the cur­rent tur­moil in the Mid­dle East,” she ex­plained.

There­fore, Gopee-Scoon added, nearshoring and reshoring were now nec­es­sary for sup­ply chain re­silience.

She al­so not­ed that pro­duc­tion clos­er to con­sumers is be­com­ing more com­mon, as well as the cre­ation of prod­ucts by cus­tomers, adding that sev­er­al lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers un­der­stand this and are al­ready cap­i­tal­is­ing on op­por­tu­ni­ties and by ex­am­ple, are en­gag­ing in con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing.

To fur­ther se­cure the growth of the sec­tor and boost sup­ply chain re­silience, Gopee-Scoon ad­vised that the deep­en­ing of re­gion­al sup­ply chains re­mains crit­i­cal.

Re­gard­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the min­is­ter said the com­pa­nies that will ex­cel are those that can at­tract, de­vel­op and re­tain the high­est skilled tal­ent and in­no­vate to stay ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Qual­i­ty is al­so crit­i­cal in in­creas­ing ex­ports.

“Our man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts must meet and even ex­ceed cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions. Im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prod­ucts will not on­ly al­low for re­peat busi­ness, but will build this coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al brand and rep­u­ta­tion,” Gopee-Scoon fur­ther ad­vised.

Al­so high on the agen­da is cli­mate change which can af­fect the sec­tor.

The min­is­ter not­ed that cli­mate change is a threat that is forc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers glob­al­ly to change their pro­duc­tion process­es and the types of prod­ucts they pro­duce.

“As such, re­spon­si­ble pro­duc­tion prac­tices are no longer an eth­i­cal choice, they have be­come strate­gic im­per­a­tives,” the min­is­ter urged.