The Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) is tar­get­ing the list­ing of 20 SMEs (small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es) on the lo­cal stock mar­ket by the end of 2024.

That’s the aim vo­calised by Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the TTSE, Eva Mitchell, fol­low­ing the fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the TTSE and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) on Fri­day.

She is hope­ful the part­ner­ship would vast­ly in­crease the num­ber of list­ed com­pa­nies on the stock ex­change by the end of the year.

“We at the Stock Ex­change have been work­ing re­al­ly ag­gres­sive­ly on build­ing out our SME mar­ket. We’ve done a lot of pos­i­tive changes. There are the tax in­cen­tives that we have en­hanced through­out the years,” said Mitchell, “For any­one in­ter­est­ed in list­ing on the T&T Stock Ex­change, this part­ner­ship will now open up a path­way for us to now en­gage or re-en­gage with some of the com­pa­nies that are in­ter­est­ed and al­so raise aware­ness of the ben­e­fits and the suc­cess sto­ries that can be­come pos­si­ble with list­ing on the T&T Stock Ex­change. We have two SMEs that are cur­rent­ly list­ed and, don’t wor­ry, by the end of the year it will be 20.”

Get­ting 20 SMEs list­ed on the TTSE would mean a ten-fold in­crease in pub­lic com­pa­nies in the cat­e­go­ry.

The two SMEs cur­rent­ly list­ed on the TTSE are Cin­e­maOne, which was list­ed on No­vem­ber 21, 2018, and En­deav­our Hold­ings Ltd, which was list­ed on De­cem­ber 12, 2019.

Mitchell stressed that the TTSE had been of­fer­ing sev­er­al in­cen­tives to en­cour­age greater par­tic­i­pa­tion by SMEs in the past few years and was hope­ful the men­tor­ship pro­vid­ed in this part­ner­ship with the Cham­ber would be the push re­quired for greater suc­cess with­in the busi­ness sec­tor.

“We’ve in­tro­duced our men­tor­ship pro­gramme in 2022, which was a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go. So we’re mak­ing sure that the ecosys­tem is in place and mak­ing sure that the right in­gre­di­ents are in place. We’ve done a lot with re­spect to ad­just­ing our list­ing fees to try to make it less ex­pen­sive and try to make it less of a daunt­ing process,” said Mitchell fol­low­ing the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, “We are ful­ly com­mit­ted to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try and of our econ­o­my. The Stock Ex­change stands as a pil­lar that will give ac­cess to the cap­i­tal mar­kets. And we want to just re-em­pha­sise that we will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op, we will con­tin­ue to en­gage, we will con­tin­ue to con­sult with the key stake­hold­ers like the T&T Cham­ber to en­sure that growth and de­vel­op­ment of our mar­ket is achieved.”

One year of some­what nor­mal op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, sev­er­al Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es are still hav­ing a tough time se­cur­ing the fi­nances to prop­er­ly re-es­tab­lish them­selves.

TTCIC pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj ad­mit­ted that there have been sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for these busi­ness­es par­tic­u­lar­ly about se­cur­ing cap­i­tal and for­eign ex­change to keep afloat.

This was one of the rea­sons the part­ner­ship was forged.

“It’s been mixed. We have seen some SMEs have to close their doors be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and there are oth­er rea­sons. We do have the forex is­sue. Peo­ple have said that some­times it’s just a lot of stress to have to deal es­pe­cial­ly with the re­tail side with Cus­toms and those things, the ease of do­ing busi­ness. We’re not scor­ing 10 on the score­card in every as­pect, but I think that we’ve been able to iden­ti­fy and get bet­ter at some of them,” said Ma­haraj.

The part­ner­ship be­tween the two en­ti­ties was de­vel­oped as both groups saw sev­er­al busi­ness­es with the po­ten­tial to do well as pub­licly list­ed com­pa­nies but fell short in terms of the ca­pac­i­ty to achieve that goal.

“The co­op­er­a­tive agree­ment will do a few things. One is that we’re go­ing to be able to pro­vide sup­port to them. So that is in terms of ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, and knowl­edge trans­fer. A lot of SMEs have the po­ten­tial to list on the stock ex­change, but the in­fra­struc­ture is what they may be miss­ing. They don’t un­der­stand some of the gov­er­nance is­sues. They don’t un­der­stand some of the fi­nan­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion that they re­quire. Through this ini­tia­tive, we’ll be able to give them that kind of sup­port,” said Ma­haraj, “So there is knowl­edge trans­fer, and we ac­tu­al­ly will be look­ing at men­tor­ship as well and cre­at­ing this pipeline. It al­so helps be­cause peo­ple are look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­vest. This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them be­cause if these SMEs go to the ju­nior Stock Ex­change, any­body who’s in­ter­est­ed in putting their mon­ey some­where can in­vest in them. So what it does is that it builds a most stur­dy ecosys­tem for our SMEs to pros­per and it’s premised on shared pros­per­i­ty, and in­clu­siv­i­ty.”

Ma­haraj not­ed that 70 per cent of the cham­ber’s mem­ber­ship com­prised SMEs and in­deed much of the econ­o­my’s per­for­mance hinged on the suc­cess of SMEs. She said while there were some mixed re­turns in terms of the de­vel­op­ment of these busi­ness­es in 2023, there were some signs of re­vival as well.

“I think right now for a lot of them they are in a stage of re­vamp­ing and re­vis­ing their busi­ness mod­els. The good news is that we are see­ing new SMEs pop­ping up every day. So it’s not a feel­ing of de­spair, where peo­ple are def­i­nite­ly shut­ting down what we’re see­ing is rein­vent­ing your busi­ness mod­els,” said Ma­haraj.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning stressed that the de­vel­op­ment of SMEs was cru­cial now, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the non-en­er­gy sec­tor’s re­cent im­pact on the econ­o­my.

“The SME sec­tor is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant one. It’s one that the Min­istry of Fi­nance has been fo­cus­ing on. We have seen tremen­dous growth in the SME sec­tor be­cause of what has been done, the work that’s be­ing done by the Min­istry, al­so the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. And we are al­ways hap­py to sup­port the sec­tor so that more pur­chas­es will not be in­volved in work­ing for them­selves and then get­ting in­volved in that kind of thing be­cause it grows the econ­o­my. We now have a non-en­er­gy sec­tor that out­strips the en­er­gy sec­tor. We’re very proud about that and we be­lieve that ini­tia­tives that we have im­ple­ment­ed and as­sist­ed that in hap­pen­ing,” said Man­ning fol­low­ing the sign­ing of the MOU.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that many SMEs were falling short in sev­er­al facets of busi­ness and hoped that this lat­est pro­gramme would help ad­dress these is­sues.

“We have var­i­ous pro­grammes out there de­signed to as­sist SMEs in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Of course that comes with a cer­tain lev­el of rigour and dis­ci­pline by these SMEs. They have, of course, to reg­is­ter their com­pa­nies. They have to pay their tax­es. They have to be sure to re­port their fi­nan­cial state­ments on time and they have to be au­dit­ed. These are the rigours that young busi­ness­es need to be suc­cess­ful and to be ac­count­able to the in­vestors and share­hold­ers,” said Man­ning.