An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to in­crease their ex­ports, that should help with the for­eign ex­change crunch be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced for the past 15 years.

That is the view of Ash­meer Mo­hamed Chair­man of ex­porTT, who told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that all the com­pa­ny can do is sup­port in­vest­ments, pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty, stan­dards, and mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion so the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers can be more com­pet­i­tive and suc­cess­ful in the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Suc­cess­ful man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ports will bring in more for­eign ex­change, but it would not be seen im­me­di­ate­ly.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that ac­cess to for­eign ex­change con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge for most ex­porters as they work with their bankers to get the nec­es­sary mon­ey to pay for­eign sup­pli­ers for raw ma­te­ri­als and ser­vices. For­tu­nate­ly, the Ex­im­Bank has fa­cil­i­ties in place to make forex avail­able to ex­porters for these pur­pos­es, said Mo­hamed.  

Asked what are some of the chal­lenges faced by lo­cal ex­porters whilst ex­port­ing to var­i­ous mar­kets, Mo­hamed said price com­pet­i­tive­ness is a chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly in ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­kets like those in Latin Amer­i­ca.  

“Over­com­ing this re­quires that we be­come more ef­fi­cient, in­crease the scale of pro­duc­tion, and re­duce the cost of lo­gis­tics by sourc­ing raw ma­te­ri­als from sup­pli­ers who are ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly clos­er or con­sol­i­dat­ing ship­ments with oth­er ex­porters. The oth­er al­ter­na­tive will be to make prod­ucts unique or pre­mi­um so that they can fetch a high­er price that cov­ers the cost of pro­duc­tion and mar­gins while pro­vid­ing a healthy prof­it,” he ex­plained.

On the is­sue of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers meet­ing im­port re­quire­ments in for­eign coun­tries, the ex­porTT chair­man said that ex­port­ing in­to a mar­ket can be com­plex and mis­un­der­stood, which can re­sult in cost­ly mis­takes. To over­come this, ex­porters must have all the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their prod­ucts such as stan­dards, reg­is­tra­tions, du­ties, tax­es, etc, so that the mar­ket en­try can be smooth and un­event­ful.

Push­ing for­ward in­to new mar­kets

Ques­tioned on whether com­pa­nies were able to pen­e­trate new in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al mar­kets in 2023, Mo­hamed said ex­porTT was able to ex­e­cute trade mis­sions and trade shows to the mar­kets be­low un­der the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive and through part­ner­ships with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC):

Grena­da; Pana­ma; Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic; Colom­bia; Suri­name; Ja­maica; St. Lu­cia; US (Mi­a­mi); Chi­na; Cu­ba and­Bar­ba­dos.

He high­light­ed that there has been greater suc­cess in the mar­kets of Cari­com than those that are ex­tra-re­gion­al.  

“Some of the rea­sons for this are that there are low­er mar­ket-en­try re­quire­ments, ex­porters are more price com­pet­i­tive, and no lan­guage and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers that can pose a chal­lenge to ne­go­ti­a­tions. Nev­er­the­less, there are huge op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­tra-re­gion­al­ly in mar­kets like the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Colom­bia, and Chi­na.”  

In 2024, Mo­hamed out­lined that the com­pa­ny will be ex­plor­ing the African con­ti­nent for the first time with a trade mis­sion to Ghana in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TTMA and TTCIC and will con­tin­ue its ef­forts in Pana­ma and Mi­a­mi with the Ex­poCom­er and Amer­i­ca’s Food and Bev­er­age Shows re­spec­tive­ly.  

“For­tu­nate­ly, we have com­mer­cial of­fi­cers in both these mar­kets, who can sup­port our ef­forts and con­tin­ue the fol­low-ups re­quired to con­vert the op­por­tu­ni­ties gen­er­at­ed in­to busi­ness. Chi­na will be the last ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­ket on our sched­ule as we par­tic­i­pate in the Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po in Shang­hai for the fourth time.”

Trade be­tween EU and T&T

As it per­tains to the im­prove­ment of trade be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union and T&T, the ex­porTT chair­man dis­closed that the most re­cent avail­able da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) in­di­cate trade re­la­tions with the EU have ful­ly re­cov­ered fol­low­ing the ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.  

“For the year 2022, we find that to­tal ex­ports to that re­gion av­er­aged at US$ 2.575 bil­lion, with a pos­i­tive trade bal­ance for that year av­er­ag­ing US$ 1.961 bil­lion. This rep­re­sents an in­crease in ex­ports of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 115 per cent over 2021 fig­ures, and a fur­ther 368 per cent im­prove­ment over the val­ues record­ed for the year 2020,” Mo­hamed re­vealed.

In terms of non-en­er­gy ex­ports to the EU mar­ket specif­i­cal­ly, he men­tioned that ex­ports in­creased by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 193 per cent be­tween 2021 and 2022, with T&T record­ing an ex­port val­ue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$31.6 Mil­lion in the year 2022 to that re­gion.  

“It must be not­ed, al­though we see that in gen­er­al there was in­creased in­ter­est for T&T prod­ucts by the ma­jor­i­ty of the EU mem­ber­ship; Ger­many was by far a stand-out case, where non-en­er­gy im­ports from T&T in­creased by rough­ly 1,654 per cent. Ger­many was al­so T&T’s top non-en­er­gy ex­port des­ti­na­tion with­in the EU that year, with an im­port val­ue of rough­ly US$11.38 Mil­lion.”  

About the com­po­si­tion of the prod­ucts ex­port­ed to the EU; in the year 2022 the vast ma­jor­i­ty were con­sid­ered en­er­gy prod­ucts, where the split be­tween en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy was rough­ly 98.19 per cent to 1.21 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. These prod­ucts fall un­der the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories of:  

In­or­gan­ic chem­i­cals; min­er­al fu­els; or­gan­ic chem­i­cals; fer­tilis­ers; ores, slag and ash.

In terms of non-en­er­gy how­ev­er, T&T top ex­port­ed prod­ucts to the re­gion that year fell un­der the cat­e­gories:  

* Pre­cious, or se­mi-pre­cious stones;

* Bev­er­ages, spir­its and vine­gar;

* Mis­cel­la­neous ed­i­ble prepa­ra­tions;

* Mis­cel­la­neous chem­i­cal prod­ucts; and

* Co­coa and co­coa prepa­ra­tions

Mo­hamed in­di­cat­ed that ex­porTT’s Fit4Eu­rope 2 project is cur­rent­ly be­ing im­ple­ment­ed and fo­cus­es on the mar­kets of Ger­many and Swe­den and uptick in ex­ports to Ger­many is cer­tain­ly promis­ing and it is hoped that some new ex­port or­ders and part­ner­ships in Swe­den will be de­vel­oped.

Goals archived in 2023

Mo­hamed said 10 com­pa­nies have been able to gen­er­ate new ex­port or­ders as a re­sult of par­tic­i­pat­ing in its Ex­port Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gramme which of­fers cus­tomised train­ing, ex­port coach­ing, and ac­cess to sev­er­al ex­porTT’s grants.

Al­so, he iden­ti­fied that a to­tal of 35 small firms ben­e­fit­ted from ex­porTT’s Air­fare As­sis­tance Grants that pro­vid­ed funds to­wards the cost of their air­fare to en­able them to par­tic­i­pate in trade mis­sions and trade shows ex­e­cut­ed by ex­porTT and its part­ners.  

“Ten man­u­fac­tur­ers of in­dige­nous sweets in To­ba­go were able to com­plete the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of their prod­ucts which have re­sult­ed in in­creased shelf life, im­proved and ac­cu­rate la­belling and greater con­sis­ten­cy in size and taste. The pack­ag­ing up­grades are be­ing fi­nalised so they can be tak­en in­to ex­port mar­kets.”

Amal­ga­ma­tion  

In 2022, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency (TT­TI­PA),  

He said to avoid du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts and to fo­cus on a tar­get­ed ap­proach to trade and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion, the new en­ti­ty is based on a merg­er of sev­er­al oth­er agen­cies: Ex­porTT, In­vesTT, Cre­ativeTT, and el­e­ments of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI).

Im­bert in­di­cat­ed that it would be op­er­a­tional by 2023, but sources told Busi­ness Guardian that it is at a crit­i­cal stage of merg­er, which is ex­pect­ed to hap­pen some­time this year.