The appointment of well-known and highly successful manufacturer/exporter Satyakama “Kama” Maharaj, as Minister of Trade, Investment and Tourism, has already been well-received by the T&T Manufacturers’ Association and other business interests. His appointment to the Cabinet is one of the better executive managerial decisions taken up to this point by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in shaping her new Government.
Little needs to be added about Maharaj’s 30-year-plus venture into manufacturing and the spread of his cosmetic products through the US and other parts of the Americas, including Cuba; quite a range of differing markets. His venture into the rough, tough and very competitive overseas trade in cosmetic products is one of the success stories of the manufacturing and export sector in T&T.
It has been repeated on many occasions by economists, exporters and government spokespersons that developing the local non-energy manufacturing industry for export is vital if this country is to reduce its present almost complete dependence on the petroleum and petrochemical industry to earn foreign exchange.
But it’s not just a matter for T&T to expand the manufacturing space, but a challenge to broaden the conceptual mindset in which elements of the business sector have operated throughout the post-colonial period. What the new Minister of Trade can do for the local manufacturing sector is to have those members of the industry conceive of operating in a new space, ie, the world market outside of Caricom.
Already, Minister Maharaj has identified the 470 million people in the West Africa market as a potential continental source of trade. West Africa can also be a jumping-off point to the other countries in that region, all of them being potential customers for T&T-manufactured products and services.
To grasp the possibilities contained therein will most certainly be a means of expanding out of the local and Caricom markets of seven to eight million consumers. Moreover, in adopting a path to expand the horizons of trade, local manufacturers will effectively move out of the colonial past into truly a new world.
A major challenge identified by Minister Maharaj is to dramatically cut the travel time between the Caribbean and Africa from the two-day time frame to one of eight hours. That in itself will provide possibilities for Caribbean Airlines.
The usual contention of which element of the trading possibilities should precede the other will arise - whether production and trading should begin before the air transportation links are in place. That is as it should be, a coordination between the two aspects of trade setting down the basis for production, export and import. In this respect, a tourism industry between the islands and the continent may also present itself to establish the ground for the take-off in trade relations. The direct and involved work must start now without delay, with all of the potential players becoming active.
Refreshingly, so far in his initial statements, Minister Maharaj has avoided going down a political road with the kind of chat usually associated with politicians winning and losing office and both feeling the need to get into political skirmishes playing to the gallery. This is a good sign because the country is not in a position to tolerate political games.