Con­stant in­ter­nal chal­lenges have made the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor ex­treme­ly in­no­v­a­tive and re­silient.

This was the shared view of sev­er­al pan­el­lists on Tues­day at the lead­er­ship dis­cus­sion and net­work­ing event host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

Group chief per­for­mance of­fi­cer of ANSA McAL Ltd Adam Sab­ga, in his con­tri­bu­tion, hailed the sec­tor’s re­cov­ery fol­low­ing the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Emerg­ing out of COVID, now in­to the new norm and the lev­el of di­verse port­fo­lios, prod­ucts and even ser­vices of in­di­vid­u­als with­in our sup­port teams. How quick­ly we’ve been able as a na­tion to get back on our feet is some­thing that needs to be ap­plaud­ed,” Sab­ga said.

He not­ed this re­cov­ery had sim­ply proved that T&T’s busi­ness­es con­tin­ued to show re­silience in the face of mount­ing chal­lenges.

“To grow any­thing, you need to be re­silient. And when one looks at our man­u­fac­tur­ers and our in­dus­tries, we are an ex­treme­ly re­silient bunch,” Sab­ga said adding, “When you look at the crime sit­u­a­tion when you look at our ports, when you look at the ease of do­ing busi­ness, when you look at the lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty that we get from our work­force, things are stacked up against us even at the high, or big­ger lev­el down to the SME lev­el. So, the point is that re­silience is so crit­i­cal as to who we are.”

Sab­ga felt ob­sta­cles such as the ease of do­ing busi­ness and oth­er bu­reau­crat­ic hur­dles had cre­at­ed unique ap­proach­es to these prob­lems. How­ev­er, he felt it still de­nied the coun­try from achiev­ing its true po­ten­tial.

“See­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty that comes out of that, when you look at how much is spent in just deal­ing with those in­ef­fi­cien­cies. Imag­ine if we get that out of the way. Imag­ine what we can do as a coun­try, imag­ine what we can do as a na­tion? Imag­ine how many more SMEs can thrive.

“I mean, it took you sev­er­al years to get to where you were, you could have got there half the time and things were not stacked up against you. And there is a huge lev­el of in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty. There’s a huge lev­el of in­spi­ra­tional fo­cus in this coun­try. If we could on­ly get these ob­sta­cles out of the way we would be un­stop­pable,” Sab­ga added.

This sen­ti­ment was echoed by the founder and CEO of Kam­ri Glass, Kameel Khan who re­vealed the com­pa­ny had achieved sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess lo­cal­ly be­fore find­ing suc­cess in the ex­port mar­ket.

Khan not­ed the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tions in Guyana had seen the com­pa­ny be­come a sup­pli­er of glass to ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the South Amer­i­can state.

Khan not­ed sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant hur­dles had to be over­come along the way, how­ev­er, he used these chal­lenges to find so­lu­tions.

“I looked at it a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. We start­ed to ex­port and that caused a prob­lem. We did well with forex but with our man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, we start­ed to end up with VAT prob­lems that went on and on.

“Last year, au­di­tors came in and said, hey, you need to fig­ure out some­thing. If you keep go­ing this way, you gonna reach the whole next year. And you’re just go­ing to be pay­ing VAT and run in­to cash flow prob­lems,” Khan said, re­fer­ring to the de­layed pay­ment of VAT re­funds.

Khan said to avoid the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges that fol­lowed the com­pa­ny took on strate­gic in­vest­ments.

“I agree the VAT could come in and help with that in­vest­ment. But put me against a wall to do some­thing, I am not go­ing to crum­ble. I am go­ing to push back and go with it, rein­vest in cap­i­tal. When that VAT mon­ey comes in, it comes in. But for now, I plan like I don’t have it,” Khan said, who not­ed these chal­lenges pushed Kam­ri Glass in­to in­vest­ing in re­new­able en­er­gy via so­lar.

An­oth­er mem­ber of the pan­el, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of La­bel House Ryan Lewis ad­vised that Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor could meet to find some so­lu­tions to these ob­sta­cles.

“I re­al­ly be­lieve that there is a pri­vate sec­tor, pub­lic sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion that we can at­tack some of these items, as well, with our ad­vice. I think there are ways that we can re­al­ly get past it and re­al­ly move in­to a new realm where it is a lot eas­i­er to op­er­ate here,” Lewis added.

The pan­el al­so felt the busi­ness sec­tor had made strides in re­cent years, not­ing that it had al­so al­lowed for greater in­clu­sion of women in the busi­ness.

“I came in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing about sev­en years ago. And to be hon­est, when it first came in­to this space, there were a lot more males than fe­males with­in this in­dus­try.

“And I mean, it is the na­ture of it. But I be­lieve since that time, and even look­ing around the crowd to­day, it’s def­i­nite­ly be­come very equal at that lev­el,” Gabrielle Agos­ti­ni, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of CGA Ltd ex­plained.

She added that com­ing out of COVID-19, more op­tions had emerged for busi­ness­es to ex­plore.

“The mar­ket from about say 50 years ago was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to what it is now. The en­vi­ron­ment is dif­fer­ent. There aren’t as many, I should say gaps in the mar­ket to be able to launch new prod­ucts. So, you re­al­ly have to do the re­search. And that’s what we did when we launched this new brand,” Agos­ti­ni said, as she urged new busi­ness­es to use tech­nol­o­gy to prop­er­ly re­search and as­sess their busi­ness ap­proach.

“Es­pe­cial­ly now com­ing out of COVID there are just so many re­sources on­line and they are all these AI tools where you can just find any type of in­for­ma­tion that you want to on any sort of trends that they are in the mar­kets is re­al­ly to spend that time I would say and fig­ure out where the gaps in the mar­ket are and be­cause there prob­a­bly still quite a bit and then be­ing able to take that busi­ness and re­al­ly de­vel­op it,” Agos­ti­ni who re­count­ed the steps tak­en be­fore the launch of CGA’s Ce­dros Bay co­conut oil prod­uct line.

The pan­el­lists, how­ev­er, agreed that greater men­tor­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion were need­ed with­in the sec­tor to fur­ther de­vel­op SMEs in the coun­try.

Mean­while, Lewis ad­vised that men­tor­ship is al­so im­por­tant.

“I be­lieve that you know, us­ing the road has al­ready been run, un­der­stand­ing where peo­ple have fall­en be­fore, helps you to get there much quick­er. And I think there needs to be more col­lab­o­ra­tion in­stead of com­pe­ti­tion. I think when you hear of suc­cess­es in Guyana or oth­er coun­tries, how do we as a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­mu­ni­ty, talk more about it and then get that more to the SMEs to un­der­stand okay, this is the roadmap to suc­cess,” Lewis added.