GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon says there is an in­creas­ing fo­cus on us­ing lo­cal in­puts in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing as she em­pha­sised that this coun­try is recog­nised as the hub of man­u­fac­tur­ing in the Caribbean.

Gopee-Scoon made the com­ments yes­ter­day while speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia as she toured the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) which has be­come a sta­ple in the cal­en­der of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers'As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

The event was held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya.

Not­ing that the TIC fo­cus­es on large­ly on the food and bev­er­age sec­tor the min­is­ter ex­plained, "Some of the oth­er com­po­nents like con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als are a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult to show so you are go­ing to see food and bev­er­age. We un­der­stand that in­puts have been large­ly im­port­ed and the fo­cus is there on build­ing that ca­pac­i­ty so we have lo­cal in­put in­stead."

She said such ef­fort will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly shown at the up­com­ing agri ex­po to be held next month in Port-of-Spain.

This year’s theme for the TIC is “Glob­al Hori­zons,” re­flect­ing a shared vi­sion to con­tin­ue to build a ro­bust and dy­nam­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor that not on­ly meets lo­cal de­mands but al­so com­petes in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter added.

Gopee Scoon said she is al­so con­fi­dent the grow­ing size of the TIC au­gurs well for ex­ports in T&T as she said the in­creased lay­out and num­ber of booths un­der­lined the strides be­ing made by the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor

"This is the ex­pec­ta­tion we have with the TTMA, be­cause they've been do­ing well for the last 25 years and there has been sub­stan­tial growth in the con­tri­bu­tion to our GDP and al­so to our ex­port lev­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly to the Caribbean over the last 25 years and now more than ever mov­ing ex­tra re­gion­al­ly. So we're pleased to see what's on of­fer," she said.

Gopee-Scoon not­ed that sales at the TIC could eas­i­ly eclipse the bil­lion dol­lar tar­get set by the TTMA's Pres­i­dent Roger Roach at the open­ing of the event on Wednes­day.

"You're go­ing to have a lot of sales here and I have no doubt that that's a pos­si­bil­i­ty we will reach that kind of num­ber as we ex­pect us to put of more than 30,000 par­tic­i­pants in this at this TIC con­ven­tion," the min­is­ter said.

She al­so not­ed that more in­ter­na­tion­al booths were set up as the TIC sig­ni­fy­ing grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est.

While it is not the first time In­dia has had a booth at the TIC, In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er to the T&T, Pradeep Singh Ra­jpuro­hit, said his coun­try is ex­plor­ing an ex­pan­sion of trade with T&T.

"We know there is a lot of in­di­rect trade hap­pen­ing with be­tween In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go, but the fo­cus has been now on more di­rect trade. So our em­pha­sis is now on to un­der­stand more lo­cal re­quire­ments and bring­ing more com­pa­nies more in­vestors and man­u­fac­tur­ers to Trinidad and To­ba­go from In­dia," he ex­plained.