RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go spent over $2 bil­lion on the im­por­ta­tion of ce­re­als, fruits and veg­eta­bles last year, says Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon.

De­liv­er­ing her con­tri­bu­tion on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill (2021) in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Gopee-Scoon said ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), food im­ports were val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5.67 bil­lion in 2019 cre­at­ing a se­ri­ous drain on valu­able for­eign ex­change.

“Of that amount, $1.1 bil­lion each was spent on ce­re­als and fruits and veg­eta­bles. We spend TT$180 mil­lion on bis­cuits, bread and pas­tries and TT$28 mil­lion on mix­es and doughs. I say this to say that there is a con­text for de­ci­sions tak­en to curb for­eign ex­change leak­ages,” Gopee-Scoon told the House in ref­er­ence to the ap­par­ent ex­pen­sive taste for ex­ot­ic for­eign food items by con­sumers.

Gopee-Scoon not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment will now pri­ori­tise the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change for the im­por­ta­tion of food, med­i­cines and man­u­fac­tur­ing in­puts.

“We must al­so buy lo­cal and sup­port lo­cal­ly-made goods and ser­vices,” she added.

She not­ed that over the last five years, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s av­er­age an­nu­al ex­ports bill in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor was TT$13.6 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 per cent of to­tal ex­ports. Iron, steel and met­al prod­ucts ac­count­ed for 85 per cent while food and bev­er­ages were 25 per cent.

“In 2019, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports reached over 120 mar­kets glob­al­ly, span­ning most re­gions of the world, in­clud­ing North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean, Eu­rope, as well as Asia, Africa and Ocea­nia,” Gopee-Scoon said.

Not­ing there were en­cour­ag­ing signs of a re­bound in the non-en­er­gy ex­ports sec­tor, Gopee-Scoon said, “Our av­er­age month­ly non-en­er­gy ex­ports for the pe­ri­od Au­gust-Sep­tem­ber 2020 to­talled TT$628 mil­lion per month against TT$539 mil­lion for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary-Ju­ly 2020, which rep­re­sents 16.5 per cent in­crease in the last two months.”

Be­cause of this, Gopee-Scoon said, “The Gov­ern­ment will in­ject more re­sources in­to ex­port pro­mo­tion and con­tin­ue to con­duct vir­tu­al trade mis­sions to Latin Amer­i­ca, USA and the Eu­ro­pean Union.

“It will al­so ne­go­ti­ate the ex­pan­sion of pref­er­en­tial ac­cess and build the ex­port ca­pac­i­ty of our man­u­fac­tur­ers un­der the ex­ist­ing trade agree­ments.”

She al­so said there were 184 non-en­er­gy ex­porters whose ex­port earn­ings were above TT$1 mil­lion.

“How­ev­er, 55 per cent of these ex­porters (102) are SMEs and as such, more sup­port is re­quired to im­prove their ex­port ca­pa­bil­i­ties in the medi­um to long term,” she said.

She not­ed how­ev­er that in­ter­na­tion­al trade was af­fect­ed by the im­pact of COVID-19.

To­tal ex­ports dropped by 41 per cent in 2020 from TT$23.6 bil­lion in the first half of 2019 com­pared to TT$13.8 bil­lion in the same pe­ri­od this year,” Gopee-Scoon re­vealed.

She said non-en­er­gy ex­ports dropped from TT$5.2 bil­lion to $4.3 bil­lion, an 18 per cent de­cline, be­tween the pe­ri­ods Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 2020.

To boost the coun­try’s ex­port ca­pac­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness in for­eign mar­kets, Gopee-Scoon said an Ex­port Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing Pro­gramme was con­tin­ued by ex­porTT in fis­cal 2020.

“Over the pe­ri­od 2016-2020, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 in­di­vid­u­als from 886 com­pa­nies were trained in over 100 ex­port ca­pac­i­ty pro­grammes,” she added.

Al­so, to de­vel­op en­tre­pre­neur­ship among women in T&T, Gopee-Scoon said the Gov­ern­ment will launch a Na­tion­al SheTrades Hub on Oc­to­ber 28, 2020.

“This ini­tia­tive is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort with the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­ter (ITC), ex­porTT and the min­istry. SheTrades aims to con­nect 3 mil­lion women en­tre­pre­neurs to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets by 2021,” she said.

She called on the pri­vate sec­tor to part­ner with Gov­ern­ment, not­ing that op­por­tu­ni­ties are avail­able in the elec­tron­ic as­sem­bly steel­pan, tex­tile and gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing for do­mes­tic fash­ion in­dus­tries, cos­met­ic pro­duc­tion, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and nu­traceu­ti­cals, in­clud­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na, down­stream alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion and the scrap iron in­dus­try.