Charles Kong Soo

The food and bev­er­age in­dus­try has been iden­ti­fied as play­ing a crit­i­cal role in di­ver­si­fy­ing the coun­try from heavy en­er­gy de­pen­den­cy. "Sev­en years ago the Gov­ern­ment took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with de­pend­ing sole­ly or heav­i­ly on an en­er­gy-based in­dus­try, with en­er­gy prices be­ing as volatile as they are, and bas­ing it on a non-re­new­able re­source," Food And Bev­er­age In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee (FBIDC) chair­man Megh­nath Go­sein dis­closed. "It iden­ti­fied six in­dus­tries for de­vel­op­ment as part of a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise.

"The food and bev­er­age in­dus­try is one of the in­dus­tries iden­ti­fied as be­ing crit­i­cal to the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion process for T&T." He was speak­ing to en­tre­pre­neurs at the FBIDC's pro­gramme ti­tled Do­ing Busi­ness in Latin and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Op­por­tu­ni­ties and Chal­lenges, at Court­yard by Mar­riott, In­vaders Bay, Port-of-Spain, on Sep­tem­ber 27."If we did not recog­nise the need for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion sev­er­al years ago, sure­ly oil prices of $80 per bar­rel will tell us that it is soon­er rather than lat­er that we would not be able to de­pend on the en­er­gy in­dus­try to dri­ve the de­vel­op­ment process in T&T," Go­sein said.

"Out­side of the en­er­gy-based in­dus­tries the food and bev­er­age in­dus­try is al­ready a crit­i­cal part of the econ­o­my in terms of its for­eign ex­change earn­ings, its em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion, and its con­tri­bu­tion to gross do­mes­tic prod­uct." He said the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor was op­er­at­ing at less than 70 per cent of its ca­pac­i­ty. "If we are to dri­ve the pro­duc­tion in the food and bev­er­age sec­tor high­er and to the de­sired lim­its we need to em­bark on new and emerg­ing mar­kets," Go­sein said. "If we want to en­ter the play­ing field of the vir­tu­al­ly un­tapped 40 mil­lion Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket, we will need to learn the rules of the game such as the le­gal as­pects, lan­guage, cul­ture and reg­u­la­tions."

He said while T&T was ex­plor­ing new mar­kets, it could not aban­don ex­ist­ing mar­kets in the Caribbean, US and Eu­rope. (Charles Kong Soo)