Joe Pires has a fair bit of knowl­edge about T&T’s busi­ness.

He is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Caribbean Chem­i­cal, a com­pa­ny found­ed by his fa­ther, Joe Pires Snr in 1966.

Pires Snr would fur­ther widen his mark on the lo­cal busi­ness land­scape, twice serv­ing as Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and be­ing in­duct­ed posthu­mous­ly in­to the Busi­ness Hall of Fame in 2016.

To say Pires has tak­en af­ter his fa­ther in that re­gard may be an eu­phemism. To­day, he can claim not on­ly to have pushed the ex­pan­sion of the com­pa­ny but al­so to cred­i­bly claim the ti­tle of se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur.

While he has much to be proud of since step­ping in­to the realm of busi­ness on his own, Pires told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that T&T can sim­i­lar­ly be proud of the evo­lu­tion of its busi­ness sec­tor since the Union Jack was low­ered and the Red, White, and Black was raised on this day, 63 years ago.

“We’ve had sig­nif­i­cant growth in our econ­o­my. Our coun­try as a whole has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly. From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, we’ve be­come a far more de­vel­oped na­tion in that we’ve put in in­fra­struc­ture that many coun­tries dream of,” said Pires in a phone in­ter­view.

“Yes, we could have done bet­ter in hind­sight, but at the end of the day, Trinidad and To­ba­go is for­tu­nate to be where it is. Even though we have is­sues, we’re still for­tu­nate com­pared to a lot of coun­tries in the world to have the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment that we have and the lifestyle that we have.”

Pires ex­plained the ini­tial steps af­ter In­de­pen­dence were dot­ted with at­tempts to se­cure a na­tion­al iden­ti­ty via Gov­ern­ment’s ac­qui­si­tion of pre­vi­ous en­ti­ties cen­tral to the busi­ness sec­tor of the coun­try. Since then, he has seen the grad­ual growth and in­flu­ence of the pri­vate sec­tor.

“Ini­tial­ly, when we first gained in­de­pen­dence, a lot of it was more of a na­tion­al­is­tic ap­proach, mean­ing, let’s na­tion­alise all the big busi­ness­es. Let’s get the com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my owned by the gov­ern­ment.

“And I think suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have recog­nised that the pri­vate sec­tor has played a sig­nif­i­cant role and will con­tin­ue to play a sig­nif­i­cant role with gen­er­al com­pa­nies like Massy and Bry­den’s, ANSA McAL and Cli­co pos­i­tive­ly con­tributed to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try as a whole.”

Pires him­self has seen his fair share of ups and downs in his 40 years in busi­ness so far. How­ev­er, he stat­ed that the dis­rup­tive oc­cur­rences such as the Black Pow­er ri­ots, the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup and even the 9/11 ter­ror­ist at­tack may have neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the busi­ness land­scape, but in most cas­es, the busi­ness sec­tor learnt lessons of re­silience as a re­sult.

“Whether it’s a small par­lour or run­ning a one-man op­er­a­tion, or run­ning a medi­um or large-sized com­pa­ny, there’s al­ways risk in­volved in busi­ness. And with busi­ness and with risk, comes the ups and downs,” said Pires.

“The de­val­u­a­tions, the po­lit­i­cal is­sues such as Black Pow­er and the at­tempt­ed coup, the COVID (pan­dem­ic), all these ob­sta­cles that have come in our path have made us as busi­ness­men, fo­cus more on our busi­ness, learn a lot more. Learn how to achieve suc­cess in these dif­fi­cult sce­nar­ios,” said Pires.

“So I think that the downs have taught us to get bet­ter. While some may have been op­u­lent and gone over­board in up times, that may have caused them to over­spend and maybe close at the end of day. As a busi­ness­man , what we try to do is weath­er the storm on a lev­el play­ing field, up and down, try­ing to make it sur­vive. When things start to turn down, we cut back, and we cut costs and we cut spend­ing. And when things tend to get a lit­tle bit bet­ter, we al­so go to the oth­er side of that ta­ble.”

How­ev­er, while heart­ened by the strides made by the T&T busi­ness sec­tor from In­de­pen­dence to now, he ac­knowl­edged that lo­cal busi­ness is prob­a­bly en­dur­ing its most try­ing pe­ri­od at this time. Pires felt that there were still sev­er­al lin­ger­ing is­sues cre­at­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which have been fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the for­eign ex­change con­straints in the lo­cal mar­ket.

“I think the COVID was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult in my near­ly 40 years of be­ing in busi­ness. Be­cause it’s un­like a de­val­u­a­tion, which oc­curs overnight, and you know in six months’ time or a year’s time, or even four to six months’ time, you’ve learned how to deal with the de­val­u­a­tion. Or a coup, which last­ed for two or three weeks, or 9-11, which shut down our bor­ders for about a month or two. COVID was two years sol­id, and it af­fect­ed and changed our lifestyle,” he said.

He made the point that the reper­cus­sions pf COVID still im­pact the T&T econ­o­my up to to­day.

“We’re see­ing, for ex­am­ple, that the restau­rant in­dus­try has not re­turned to pre-COVID lev­els be­cause peo­ple changed their din­ing pat­terns and their lim­ing pat­terns dur­ing COVID. So still we’re still feel­ing the im­pact of COVID, even though it’s two years lat­er af­ter covid has fin­ished. “

“I think COVID was by far the sin­gle largest eco­nom­ic im­pact that af­fect­ed busi­ness since In­de­pen­dence,” he said.

“Of course, the avail­abil­i­ty of a for­eign ex­change is a close sec­ond, and that’s on­ly been the last two years or so, right? Maybe three years it’s been go­ing on. So that’s a close sec­ond, from my per­spec­tive, be­cause it’s im­pact­ing the small busi­ness­man, the big busi­ness­man. The avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change is a crit­i­cal is­sue.”

The se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur is hope­ful that a res­o­lu­tion can be found for the forex chal­lenges, but he al­so recog­nised a shift in the dy­nam­ic in busi­ness across the re­gion. Pires not­ed that the emer­gence of Guyana’s en­er­gy sec­tor and the grow­ing strength of the Ja­maican econ­o­my have moved T&T from its perch as the fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal of the re­gion.

“Look at what is hap­pen­ing. Look at Bry­den’s be­ing over­tak­en by a Ja­maican com­pa­ny; Guardian Life is owned by a Ja­maican com­pa­ny,” he said.

How­ev­er, while he recog­nised that the strength of Ja­maican com­pa­nies has changed the sce­nario in the busi­ness do­main, it al­so of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties that lo­cal busi­ness­es can seize on.

“One of the things that I see com­ing up is peo­ple are fi­nal­ly re­al­is­ing that our Cari­com mar­ket is in­deed a siz­able mar­ket, and that we need to be a pan-Caribbean play­er if we are to sur­vive the fu­ture of busi­ness in the Caribbean. You can’t think about Trinidad alone. You have to be in all the ter­ri­to­ries. And that’s why you see Se­prod buy­ing Bry­den’s again and striv­ing for pan-Caribbean dis­tri­b­u­tion, “ he said.

“That’s why you see Agos­ti­ni ac­quir­ing a com­pa­ny in Bar­ba­dos and a com­pa­ny in An­tigua and ap­proach­ing a com­pa­ny in Ja­maica so that they can get pan-Caribbean dis­tri­b­u­tion. Same thing Massy is do­ing with their su­per­mar­kets. They’re now ac­quir­ing su­per­mar­kets, and they have Massy Mi­a­mi, look­ing to get Caribbean dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

Pires said it was some­thing he and his team recog­nised ear­ly, which prompt­ed their ex­pan­sion up the is­lands years ago.

“We’ve been pan Caribbean for the last five years. Com­plete­ly. We start­ed do­ing this years be­fore every­body else was do­ing it,” Pires said.

As T&T starts year 64, Pires is hope­ful more lo­cal busi­ness­peo­ple will see his Caribbean vi­sion.