The new Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is Tri­cia Coos­al, who was ap­point­ed in the post fol­low­ing the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s 2021 An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, which was held at the Hy­att Trinidad on Wednes­day, March 24th.

Tri­cia Coos­al takes over the post from Fran­ka Costel­loe, who held the po­si­tion from 2019 to 2020.  She had served as Vice Pres­i­dent un­der the two (2) year tenue of Ms. Costel­loe.

In her in­au­gur­al ad­dress to the mem­ber­ship, Ms. Coos­al stat­ed her com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment is cre­at­ed for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to thrive.  She al­so com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Min­is­ter of Trade and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness in this coun­try, while out­lin­ing an­tic­i­pat­ed chal­lenges such as il­lic­it trade and port is­sues.

The new TTMA pres­i­dent al­so urged the busi­ness lob­by’s mem­ber­ship: “to take ad­van­tage of the net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties the TTMA has cre­at­ed in the first quar­ter of 2021 for some mem­bers to en­gage with large su­per­mar­ket chains in the coun­try, and by ex­ten­sion the re­gion to sub­sti­tute for­eign goods with lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods.”

She added: “We have worked with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and ex­porTT to ac­cess fund­ing un­der the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive re­cent­ly launched by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. We tapped in­to this avail­able re­source to em­ploy the ser­vices of a con­sul­tant, Mr. Joel “Mon­ty” Pem­ber­ton.  Mon­ty has been giv­en one main ob­jec­tive to achieve, and that is to work to­ward grow­ing ex­ports in the coun­try with the aim of dou­bling such by the end of 2025.  First­ly though, his pri­or­i­ty is to move ex­ports from the year-end 2020 fig­ure of TT$2.3 bil­lion to TT$2.8 bil­lion by the end of 2021.”

She al­so praised man­u­fac­tur­ers for their re­silience over the past year, as the coun­try dealt with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“2020 was chal­leng­ing for most in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. We were faced with an eco­nom­ic cli­mate of fear and un­cer­tain­ty cou­pled with a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in the price of en­er­gy com­modi­ties.  How­ev­er, giv­en the re­silient bunch we in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are, we sur­vived. It is be­cause of that re­silience I must give cred­it to each and every one of you for sus­tain­ing your busi­ness through it all. Es­pe­cial­ly to those who achieved ex­po­nen­tial growth,” Tri­cia Coos­al told those gath­ered.

She not­ed that re­cent sta­tis­tics from the Fi­nance Min­istry show the non-en­er­gy busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was the one sec­tor that held its own in 2020. 

“In De­cem­ber 2020, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports did take a slight hit, mov­ing from TT$3.6B in 2019 to TT$3.3B in 2020; this rep­re­sent­ed a 5% fall year on year. I am tru­ly grat­i­fied of the min­i­mal loss suf­fered, as many ex­perts pro­ject­ed high dou­ble-dig­it loss­es for 2020. Fur­ther, when com­pared to oth­er re­gion­al pro­duc­ers, who suf­fered on the av­er­age 25% drop in pro­duc­tion, T&T pro­duc­ers feared well. This re­al­i­ty showed how re­silient the TTMA mem­bers are and how vi­tal our pro­duc­tion, em­ploy­ment and ex­ports are to­ward the sus­te­nance of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try.  Many oth­er sec­tors, such as ser­vices, in­clud­ing tourism and en­er­gy suf­fered far greater loss­es. Dur­ing this time, the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor sus­tained the econ­o­my,” she stat­ed.

She al­so re­port­ed that pre­lim­i­nary eco­nom­ic da­ta for the first quar­ter of 2021 are en­cour­ag­ing.

“There seems to be an up­ward trend in pro­duc­tion for some man­u­fac­tur­ers, es­pe­cial­ly food and bev­er­age, tex­tile—eg. face masks pro­duc­tion—chem­i­cal, print­ing and pack­ag­ing sec­tors. Gen­er­al­ly, ex­ports are nor­mal­iz­ing, and do­mes­tic sales are once again re­vert­ing to 2019 fig­ures for some en­ti­ties.  I high­ly an­tic­i­pate that the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor would be, at min­i­mum, back to the 2019 ex­port fig­ures of TT$3.6B in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture,” she said, on an op­ti­mistic note.

Tri­cia Coos­al is the 65th TTMA Pres­i­dent since the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s in­cep­tion in 1956.  She is the third fe­male to be ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion.  In ad­di­tion to Vice-Pres­i­dent, she has been a Di­rec­tor with the TTMA for the past 4 years.  She al­so chairs the Leg­isla­tive Com­mit­tee and is Vice Chair of the In­fra­struc­ture Com­mit­tee.

Tri­cia Coos­al, an Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Fi­nance and Ad­min­is­tra­tion at the Coos­al’s Group of Com­pa­nies, holds a Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion with a mi­nor in Eng­lish and a Mas­ter’s in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion.  Af­ter com­ple­tion of her stud­ies, she joined the Coos­al’s Group of Com­pa­nies in 2011.