In June last year the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) launched a five-year strat­e­gy to dou­ble non-en­er­gy ex­ports of $3.6 bil­lion in 2018 to $7 bil­lion by 2025.

The three-phased strat­e­gy for 2020 was de­signed to sta­bilise, strength­en, and se­cure the sec­tor.

“Phase One of the strat­e­gy will look at sta­bil­is­ing the do­mes­tic mar­ket, draw­ing from the ini­tia­tives that we had al­ready out­lined as crit­i­cal to sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We will bring for­ward those plans and work ag­gres­sive­ly with our mem­bers, es­pe­cial­ly the SMEs, to get trade back to De­cem­ber 2019 lev­el,” then TTMA pres­i­dent Fran­ka Costel­loe said as she launched the strat­e­gy.

“In Phase Two of the strat­e­gy im­ple­men­ta­tion, we are look­ing at strength­en­ing the base. We will re­cap­ture and re­cov­er our pre-COVID ex­port mar­ket share through a vir­tu­al re­con­nect with buy­ers, lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to build new re­la­tion­ships and strength­en ex­ist­ing ones. Per­son­al trav­el may be re­strict­ed but there is no re­stric­tion to the move­ment of goods and there is every op­por­tu­ni­ty for those who want to be first movers in the new digi­tised trad­ing space,” she said.

“In Phase Three, we will re­fo­cus our at­ten­tion on grow­ing ex­ports by tar­get­ing and se­cur­ing new mar­kets and con­nect­ing our mem­bers through B2B arrange­ments. Our ob­jec­tive is to grow ex­ports in ways that re­duce re­liance on the pub­lic sec­tor for for­eign ex­change, and fos­ter di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my. Our long-term strat­e­gy is geared to­ward dou­bling our ef­forts in ex­port by fur­ther pen­e­tra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing mar­kets while al­so se­cur­ing new mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Costel­loe said.

How­ev­er, due to the pan­dem­ic, 2020 ex­ports con­tin­ued to de­cline by six per cent from $3.5 bil­lion in 2019 to $3.3 bil­lion in 2020, ac­cord­ing to the TTMA’s an­nu­al re­port for 2020.

“We turned to our Top 40 ex­porters who had the ca­pac­i­ty to sta­bilise the non-en­er­gy ex­port fig­ure in 2021 due to emerg­ing COVID-re­lat­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties across Cari­com for prod­ucts such as food and bev­er­age, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, pack­ag­ing, gar­ments, house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts and PPE,” Costel­loe said in her pres­i­dents mes­sage in the as­so­ci­a­tion’s an­nu­al re­port.

She not­ed that the TTMA al­so worked on mar­ket re­cov­ery in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the im­pact on trade from pro­longed lock­downs glob­al­ly.

“We de­ter­mined that to strength­en the sec­tor, we had to re­cal­i­brate our strat­e­gy by push­ing new mar­ket en­trants and by ad­vanc­ing ini­tia­tives for trade ex­pan­sion through our SMEs.

TTMA’s head office, Barataria.

Anisto Alves

With an es­ti­mat­ed de­cline of 30 per cent in 2020 among new en­tries and 326 less ex­porters, it is im­per­a­tive that we act de­ci­sive­ly in the in­ter­est of SMEs to stim­u­late growth,” Costel­loe stat­ed.

Costel­loe said ex­ports are the most ef­fec­tive way to se­cure and grow the sec­tor, and for 2021, the TTMA’s aim is to cor­rect the down­ward ex­port trend to re­alise a goal of $3.79–3.96 bil­lion.

In 2020, the five man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors that showed the most re­silience were: Food & Bev­er­age, Con­struc­tion, Plas­tics, Pa­per & Pack­ag­ing, House­hold Prod­ucts (chem­i­cals) and To­bac­co.

The coun­try’s top five trade part­ners in 2020 in terms of val­ue were from CARI­COM:Ja­maica, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name and Grena­da.

Costel­loe said the TTMA has al­ways val­ued its CARI­COM re­la­tion­ship.

“And in 2020, we so­lid­i­fied it,” she stat­ed.

Costel­loe stat­ed that as chair of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee, TTMA Di­rec­tor George Naime es­tab­lished the CARI­COM Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion with six mem­ber coun­tries – name­ly Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Guyana, St. Lu­cia, Ja­maica and T&T.

“In­creas­ing ex­ports re­quires trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion for large ex­porters, tar­get­ing new mar­kets, and fol­low­ing up on trade agree­ments with Cos­ta Ri­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Guatemala, Pana­ma and soon El Sal­vador and Chile. Mar­ket strength from New En­trants and SMEs will come by deep­en­ing re­la­tion­ships with Ja­maica, Guyana, Grena­da, and Suri­name,” Costel­loe stat­ed.

Costel­loe stat­ed that the pan­dem­ic has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased glob­al de­mand for es­sen­tials.

“With our top three non-en­er­gy ex­port in­dus­tries in 2020 be­ing Food and Bev­er­age, House­hold Prod­ucts and Con­struc­tion, our mem­bers are well po­si­tioned to re­spond. Of 1,154 man­u­fac­tur­ers, the top 20 ex­porters gen­er­ate 80 per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s non-en­er­gy ex­port in­come, 18 are man­u­fac­tur­ers of Food & Bev­er­ages,” she stat­ed.

“We are there­fore well po­si­tioned to cap­ture and sus­tain this de­mand with­in the re­gion­al mar­kets and to cre­ate a more se­cure trad­ing space for the sec­tor,” Costel­loe stat­ed.

Costel­loe said it was for­tu­nate that both the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive and Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness in­dex stayed steady in 2020.

“With the re­newed com­mit­ment by Gov­ern­ment to hold agen­cies ac­count­able to im­prov­ing, we are fo­cused on im­prov­ing these in­dices by 15 per cent in 2021 through con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion with EX­IM Bank, Cus­toms, the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards, the Ports and our Po­lice Ser­vice,” she said.

Costel­loe ex­plained that the TTMA’s strat­e­gy has been based on ex­ten­sive re­search un­der­tak­en by EY and in­volved col­lect­ing and analysing da­ta of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ist­ing ex­port mar­ket for the pre­vi­ous year - 2018.

She said based on this the TTMA de­vised sev­en strate­gic pil­lars that are in­stru­men­tal to our growth and ex­pan­sion agen­da.

These are:

1. Ad­vo­ca­cy- which is about ac­tive­ly lob­by­ing Gov­ern­ment and pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies to cre­ate an ef­fec­tive, en­abling en­vi­ron­ment, where it is in­creas­ing­ly easy to do busi­ness in coun­try.

2. De­mand- where the TTMA will work as­sid­u­ous­ly to iden­ti­fy mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to ex­pand our pres­ence in ex­ist­ing mar­kets.

3. Sup­ply- aimed at de­vel­op­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of lo­cal sup­pli­ers and in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy of ac­cess to for­eign in­puts for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

4. In­fra­struc­ture- is about fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to fit-for-pur­pose man­u­fac­tur­ing in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing shared pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion mech­a­nisms. “In iden­ti­fy­ing the in­dus­tries in which we have a strong foothold, we can now cre­ate ad­e­quate and ap­pro­pri­ate in­fra­struc­ture for them to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly,” Costel­loe stat­ed..

5. Labour- is a re­al­i­ty for all of us – in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly. “The way we do busi­ness has changed and we need to in­vest in ca­reer train­ing for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, to es­tab­lish a work-ready hu­man re­source pool of skilled, pro­duc­tive and mo­ti­vat­ed peo­ple,” she stat­ed,

6. Tech­nol­o­gy/ In­no­va­tion- “If we didn’t know this in 2020, we cer­tain­ly know now that tech­nol­o­gy is the key to stay­ing in the game. Digi­ti­sa­tion and con­tin­u­ous in­no­va­tion will cre­ate ad­van­tage, keep us in step with glob­al de­vel­op­ments and po­si­tion us to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to dis­rup­tive forces,” Costel­loe stat­ed.

7. Cap­i­tal- is a re­al­i­ty for Gov­ern­ment and the fi­nan­cial sec­tor, as ac­cess to cap­i­tal and fi­nanc­ing is crit­i­cal for man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies to achieve ag­gres­sive ex­port growth.

“While the strat­e­gy des­ig­nates the pri­vate sec­tor as the in­flu­encer, it al­so recog­nis­es com­po­nents that the Gov­ern­ment must lead and in­flu­ence. We have re­viewed Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy for the sec­tor and are pleased to see that we are aligned. It is for this rea­son that ear­li­er this year, TTMA’s strat­e­gy was en­dorsed by the Min­istry of Trade & In­dus­try and ap­pend­ed to its Man­u­fac­tur­ing Pol­i­cy,” Costel­loe stat­ed.