Raphael John-Lall

Lo­cal busi­ness lead­ers all agree that be­com­ing pro­fi­cient in the use of the Span­ish lan­guage is im­por­tant as T&T’s busi­ness­es seek to en­ter Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets.

Lo­cal com­pa­nies like Sacha Cos­met­ics, Vem­co and Carib Brew­ery have suc­cess­ful­ly en­tered the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket over the past few years.

For­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Win­ston Dook­er­an, who al­so served as Fi­nance Min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion over the last 40 years told the Busi­ness Guardian, he stud­ied Span­ish while at the Cen­tral Bank and fore­saw that it would be an im­por­tant tool for busi­ness and re­gion­al trade.

Dook­er­an sent the Busi­ness Guardian an email from the Span­ish-speak­ing coun­try of Chile, where he is speak­ing at a high-lev­el fo­rum host­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

“I fore­saw the im­por­tance of learn­ing Span­ish in to­day’s world. T&T’s for­eign thrust in the Latin Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank and ob­serv­er sta­tus in the Pa­cif­ic Al­liance group­ing are but clear ex­am­ples of how Span­ish has be­come a com­mer­cial lan­guage for our fu­ture”

He said it is al­so a diplo­mat­ic lan­guage, more so now be­cause of the shifts in glob­al pol­i­tics and in Latin Amer­i­ca too.

“Cul­tur­al­ly, T&T has a strong Span­ish pres­ence over the years and a good neigh­bour to coun­tries of the re­gion. So, my in­sight then to en­roll in the Venezue­lan Em­bassy pro­gramme proved dead right. I urge all busi­ness lead­ers to do so.”

Span­ish for busi­ness

CEO of T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Vashti Guyadeen told the Busi­ness Guardian in light of their on­go­ing GoGlob­alTTSer­vices ini­tia­tive, she strong­ly be­lieves that learn­ing Span­ish is a cru­cial el­e­ment for any busi­nessper­son seek­ing to en­ter the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket.

“Learn­ing Span­ish not on­ly fa­cil­i­tates com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but al­so demon­strates gen­uine re­spect for po­ten­tial part­ners, in­vestors, and clients by show­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for their lan­guage and cul­ture. Count­less suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs have recog­nised the im­por­tance of learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage to im­prove their net­work­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and es­tab­lish pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ships with de­ci­sion-mak­ers. For in­stance, Mark Zucker­berg and Jan Koum, co-founder of What­sApp, are prime ex­am­ples of how lan­guage pro­fi­cien­cy can boost busi­ness suc­cess,” said Guyadeen.

She said not be­ing able to learn Span­ish will con­tin­ue to be a bar­ri­er to busi­ness in Latin Amer­i­ca if the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty does not make the ef­fort to learn the Span­ish lan­guage.

“Busi­ness peo­ple seek­ing to en­ter the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket can take sev­er­al steps to over­come lan­guage and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers. While trans­la­tion apps are wide­ly used, they can­not re­place the ac­tu­al un­der­stand­ing of the lan­guage. There­fore, it is cru­cial to in­vest in lan­guage learn­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly Span­ish, to gain a com­pet­i­tive edge over oth­er busi­ness­es,” Guyadeen said.

She added, “While tech­nol­o­gy can fa­cil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it should not be re­lied up­on as a quick-fix so­lu­tion. In­stead, busi­ness­es should pri­ori­tise build­ing long-term re­la­tion­ships with po­ten­tial part­ners, clients, and in­vestors in Latin Amer­i­ca, and learn­ing their lan­guage is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of this ef­fort.

“More­over, un­der­stand­ing the cul­tur­al nu­ances and busi­ness prac­tices of the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket is equal­ly im­por­tant to suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate the re­gion’s di­verse and com­plex busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.”

She al­so spoke about what the TTC­SI is do­ing to help lo­cal com­pa­nies break in­to Latin Amer­i­can and oth­er for­eign mar­kets.

“Un­der the GoGlob­alTTSer­vices brand, the TTC­SI has de­vel­oped a range of pro­grammes to equip ser­vice providers and firms with the nec­es­sary tools to ex­pand in­to new mar­kets. The Gate­way to Trade ex­port ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme is a key ini­tia­tive aimed at pro­duc­ing a co­hort of 100 glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive ser­vices firms by 2026. By sup­port­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es to ven­ture in­to new mar­kets, this ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth and job cre­ation.

Makes busi­ness eas­i­er

In a state­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian, Ex­porTT, which is charged with help­ing non-en­er­gy com­pa­nies break in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, said it is rec­om­mend­ed that com­pa­nies have Span­ish-speak­ing staff to han­dle trans­ac­tions with the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket. How­ev­er, it is not manda­to­ry.

“Some Latin Amer­i­can busi­ness­men do speak Eng­lish but in cas­es that they do not, a trans­la­tor/in­ter­preter can be hired to fa­cil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Hav­ing a Span­ish-speak­ing per­son on staff would make this process much smoother and re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ex­porTT al­so said from 2018 to present, the agency has fa­cil­i­tat­ed trade mis­sions and trade shows that as­sist­ed over 50 unique com­pa­nies in mak­ing con­nec­tions to buy­ers/clients in Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets such as Colom­bia, Cu­ba, Pana­ma and Cos­ta Ri­ca.

“Over that same pe­ri­od, through our Do­ing Busi­ness sem­i­nars, our Re­search and Op­por­tu­ni­ty Unit has pro­vid­ed mar­ket in­tel­li­gence to over 100 com­pa­nies on en­try re­quire­ments, trends, op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges in en­ter­ing the Latin Amer­i­ca mar­ket.”

Ex­porTT al­so said that lan­guage dif­fer­ences should not be seen as a bar­ri­er as there are ways to fa­cil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion with po­ten­tial buy­ers/clients in Latin Amer­i­ca such as through an in­ter­preter etc.

“Through ex­porTT’s co-fi­nanc­ing ser­vice and based on es­tab­lished cri­te­ria, com­pa­nies can get fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance in cov­er­ing 50 per cent of the costs of trans­la­tion of ex­port-re­lat­ed doc­u­ments, trade show par­tic­i­pa­tion and la­bel de­sign mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Oth­er mar­ket-en­try ac­tiv­i­ties such as prod­uct test­ing, IP reg­is­tra­tion, ship­ping of sam­ples and web­site de­vel­op­ment are al­so cov­ered.”

Ex­porTT said that based on the ap­pli­cant’s busi­ness size, see be­low the max­i­mum amounts that may be ap­proved:

-Small – $60,000 per fis­cal year (paid to sup­pli­er)

-Medi­um – $55,000 per fis­cal year (re­im­bursable)

-Large – $50,000 per fis­cal year (re­im­bursable)

60 years of Span­ish-lan­guage train­ing

Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero said over 50,000 T&T na­tion­als have been trained to speak Span­ish at the Em­bassy over the past 60 years and they have con­tributed to the field of busi­ness as well as oth­er sec­tors.

“In­deed, sev­er­al of those 50,000 have con­tributed wide­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T in ar­eas such as tourism, ed­u­ca­tion, trade, bank­ing, en­er­gy, avi­a­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, among oth­er fields. Hence, we can con­fi­dent­ly say that Venezuela has been – and will al­ways be – sup­port­ing T&T to achieve its goals while ful­ly en­gag­ing in cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion.”

Sánchez de­liv­ered his ad­dress last week at the Venezue­lan Em­bassy, Vic­to­ria Av­enue, Port-of-Spain as it cel­e­brat­ed the 60th an­niver­sary of the es­tab­lish­ment of the IVCC (Venezue­lan In­sti­tute for Cul­ture and Co-op­er­a­tion) in T&T.

The IVCC has taught Span­ish, Venezue­lan cul­ture and mu­sic, main­ly cu­a­tro and man­dolin, to more than 50,000 T&T na­tion­als over the past 60 years.