De­spite chal­lenges across busi­ness seg­ments, Courts is bet­ting on the re­silience it has seen in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket since it opened in this coun­try 35 years ago as a fur­ni­ture, home ap­pli­ance and elec­tri­cal store.

Shi­va Mun­gal, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Ltd, con­firmed in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian last Thurs­day that the cur­rent busi­ness year has proven no­tably slow­er than usu­al across both phys­i­cal re­tail and con­sumer fi­nanc­ing chan­nels.

“It has been slow­er than usu­al. I don’t think I’ll be sur­prised if you get any oth­er feed­back from any oth­er in­dus­try with­in Trinidad, but it has been a slow­er than usu­al pe­ri­od for us. But we con­tin­ue to dri­ve it as best as we can,” said Mun­gal when asked about the per­for­mance of Courts re­tail op­er­a­tions.

This would not be sur­pris­ing as most in­di­ca­tors sug­gest that re­tail sales are down.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Cen­tral Bank Da­ta Pack re­leased last week, re­tail sales had seen a con­trac­tion for much of 2025 in­to 2026

• Q1 25 -3.7%

• Q2 25 -0.5%

• Q3 25 -1.5%

• Q4 25 +0.5%

• Q1 26 -1.1

The sta­tis­tics un­der­lined what many busi­ness­es have said for some time: cus­tomers are be­ing dis­cre­tionary in their spend­ing, with in­creas­es be­ing seen in spend­ing at su­per­mar­kets and gro­ceries, grow­ing by 5.4 per cent year on year by the first quar­ter of 26, while tex­tiles and ap­par­el al­so saw an in­crease of 17.3 per cent year on year in the first quar­ter of 2026 year on year in Q1-26.

Al­though house­hold ap­pli­ances and fur­nish­ings were al­so said to in­crease by 9.5 per cent year on year in Q1-26, the mar­ket has seen chal­lenges.

Last year, long-stand­ing fur­ni­ture store Stan­dards Dis­trib­u­tors was sold to Term Fi­nance and ex­it­ed the re­tail mar­ket en­tire­ly.

ANSA McAL stat­ed that mod­er­at­ed con­sumer de­mand dri­ven by in­fla­tion, which forced shop­pers to pri­ori­tise es­sen­tial liv­ing ex­pens­es over big-tick­et house­hold items, was one of the rea­sons for the sale.

This was fur­ther ex­em­pli­fied by sig­nif­i­cant de­creas­es in oth­er as­pects of re­tail.

The Da­ta Pack ex­plained there was a de­cline in high-val­ue or cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive items such as hard­ware and con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, which was down by 13.0 per cent year on year in Q1-26.

In the past month, sev­er­al ma­jor new car deal­ers have an­nounced ma­jor sales, as mo­tor ve­hi­cles and parts al­so saw a drop-off of 12.9 per cent in Q1-26, with the Da­ta pack stat­ing sales dropped from 3,273 units in Q4-25 to 2,451 units in Q2-26, a fall of over 25 per cent..

The Da­ta Pack stat­ed busi­ness at gas sta­tions al­so de­clined by 11.5 per cent year on year in Q1-26.

This had been flagged as an eco­nom­ic warn­ing by the Pres­i­dent of the Own­er Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Reval Chat­ter­goon dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian in Ju­ly.

Chat­ter­goon had said then, “Gas sta­tions are the first tell­tale sign, once you start to see fu­el sales start­ing to de­crease. Fu­el sales around sum­mer gen­er­al­ly takes a dip, but you’re still see­ing a 10 or 15 per cent de­crease from the nor­mal sum­mer sales that tells me that re­tail is go­ing to see a very hard time to come.”

No­tably, Stan­dards’ did be­come a com­peti­tor for Courts in an­oth­er mar­ket, con­sumer loans.

But even there, Mun­gal not­ed there were chal­lenges.

“I would say, re­al­ly, the same amount of vol­umes. But again, what we no­ticed again too in as­sess­ing our loans, we do have to as­sess the risk we take on. We are get­ting the sense that a lot of peo­ple, a lot, a lot of peo­ple out there are more or less bor­rowed out now. So that has re­sult­ed in a lit­tle bit of a slow­down there as well too,” Mun­gal said.

“And apart from we bor­rowed out again, too, you would have the un­cer­tain­ty of next in­come as well too. So those are the ma­jor things that we have been see­ing pop­ping up, but there are is­sues that we con­tin­ue to work with our cus­tomers on, to help us as best as we can, from a re­spon­si­ble lend­ing point of view.”

Mun­gal’s as­sess­ment too was sup­port­ed by in­for­ma­tion in the Cen­tral Bank’s Da­ta Pack, as con­sumer cred­it ex­pan­sion has re­mained steady at 4.3 per cent year on year, but has no­tice­ably out­paced busi­ness bor­row­ing (+0.6 per cent year on year). The da­ta showed con­sumer debt grew sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster than com­mer­cial busi­ness loans.

How­ev­er, Mun­gal said the Courts team be­lieved T&T would turn around as it con­tin­ued to in­vest in the coun­try and main­tain steady staff em­ploy­ment.

“The year 1990 was re­al­ly a defin­ing time for the coun­try. Com­ing out of a pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion,” he said, “Courts would have come in at an op­por­tune time in 1991 when the coun­try was re­build­ing it­self. Then we were able to set that foun­da­tion and to main­tain that foot­print from that time of re­build­ing un­til now, so it was an im­por­tant en­try time for us.”

He ex­plained that since the coun­try had seen sev­er­al oth­er eco­nom­ic dips, as he ex­plained, “Trinidad be­ing an en­er­gy-based econ­o­my, as you know, I mean we go through sev­er­al pe­ri­ods of volatil­i­ty, and there were some key pe­ri­ods: the 2019 fi­nan­cial cri­sis, the 2014 en­er­gy down­turn, and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic more re­cent­ly.

“Those were some defin­ing mo­ments for the com­pa­ny where busi­ness would have been chal­lenged. Our cus­tomers would have been chal­lenged, and we were chal­lenged to re­al­ly help guide both our busi­ness and cus­tomers through those pe­ri­ods. What didn’t change was our cus­tomers’ as­pi­ra­tions and their needs.”

Mun­gal not­ed the com­pa­ny en­tered the mar­ket in a pe­ri­od of re­cov­ery and had seen T&T’s re­silience con­sis­tent­ly over the 35 years.

He ex­plained the com­pa­ny had a his­to­ry of in­vest­ing in T&T dur­ing these times, point­ing out that the 2009 re­ces­sion and 2014 both saw fur­ther in­vest­ment in its Freeport head­quar­ters.

Mun­gal stressed this pe­ri­od was no dif­fer­ent.

“In busi­ness, it usu­al­ly takes a time like that, a time of need, a time of lean, to re­al­ly make im­prove­ments and to make some hard de­ci­sions and hard im­prove­ments along the way,” he said.

“But we have been re­silient through those pe­ri­ods, we have con­tin­ued to in­vest in the coun­try. as you can see from the most re­cent in­vest­ment, which you’ll see as we pass the high­way our New Courts Mega Store, which has been re­built, re­designed, and reimag­ined, and along with that mega store, which is al­so in de­vel­op­ment as a plaza, which is again de­signed to re­al­ly add val­ue to that des­ti­na­tion when it’s com­plet­ed. “

Mun­gal al­so con­firmed that the re­tail chain has in­vest­ed more in lo­cal man­u­fac­tures as it nav­i­gat­ed forex chal­lenges.

He said, “De­spite this econ­o­my-wide con­straint, we re­main com­mit­ted to re­spon­si­ble fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and un­in­ter­rupt­ed ser­vice to our cus­tomers.We main­tain close, proac­tive re­la­tion­ships with our bankers and in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers, work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to se­cure ac­cess to any avail­able for­eign cur­ren­cy. This dis­ci­plined ap­proach al­lows us to meet our oblig­a­tions with time­ly and re­spon­si­ble pay­ments, pro­tect sup­ply con­ti­nu­ity, and up­hold the trust our part­ners place in us.”

He con­tin­ued, “We al­so ful­ly sup­port our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our bed­ding/mat­tress and fur­ni­ture cat­e­gories, where we pri­ori­tise TT dol­lar pay­ments. This ap­proach re­duces re­liance on for­eign ex­change while re­in­forc­ing our com­mit­ment to the lo­cal pro­duc­tion ecosys­tem and the jobs it sus­tains.

While the en­vi­ron­ment re­mains chal­leng­ing, our fo­cus is on sta­bil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and pru­dent plan­ning, en­sur­ing Courts con­tin­ues to serve the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with re­li­a­bil­i­ty and re­silience.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mun­gal ex­plained the com­pa­ny was al­so de­vel­op­ing its dig­i­tal pres­ence in re­sponse to shift­ing con­sumer be­hav­iour.