GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend to to­bac­co man­u­fac­tur­ers the same 25 per cent ex­cise tax re­duc­tion grant­ed to the al­co­hol sec­tor, warn­ing that a surge in il­lic­it cig­a­rette sales is erod­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es and threat­en­ing lo­cal mar­ket share.

The ap­peal came from TTMA pres­i­dent Emil Ramkissoon, while speak­ing at the TTMA's Pres­i­dent's Din­ner and Awards on Thurs­day night as he warned that il­le­gal to­bac­co prod­ucts con­tin­ue to gain ground in the lo­cal mar­ket and could be­come an even greater chal­lenge fol­low­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a 100 per cent ex­cise tax on to­bac­co prod­ucts.

"llic­it trade fig­ures are ris­ing be­yond 12.5 per cent on to­bac­co and there is a pro­jec­tion of an es­ca­la­tion of that fig­ure based on the 100 per cent ex­cise tax. There­fore, TTMA is strong­ly ask­ing for the 25 per cent re­duc­tion that was giv­en to the al­co­hol sec­tor to keep our man­u­fac­tur­ers com­pet­i­tive and re­gain mar­ket share," he said.

Ramkissoon not­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so re­mains fo­cused on cus­toms ef­fi­cien­cy, port op­er­a­tions, reg­u­la­to­ry process­es and the wider ease of do­ing busi­ness.

"These is­sues may seem sep­a­rate from the glam­our of in­ter­na­tion­al trade, but they are di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to our theme. Every un­nec­es­sary de­lay, avoid­able cost and un­fair com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage makes the jour­ney from lo­cal busi­ness to glob­al cham­pi­on more dif­fi­cult," Ramkissoon said.

While high­light­ing chal­lenges, Ramkissoon al­so point­ed to en­cour­ag­ing signs with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

He said the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try record­ed growth of 11.6 per cent dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2026, demon­strat­ing the re­silience of lo­cal busi­ness­es de­spite an un­cer­tain glob­al eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

The TTMA pres­i­dent al­so out­lined the as­so­ci­a­tion's broad­er goal of ac­cel­er­at­ing ex­port growth by po­si­tion­ing T&T's man­u­fac­tur­ers to com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion has set an am­bi­tious tar­get of dou­bling non-en­er­gy ex­ports to TT$10.6 bil­lion by 2030, while not­ing that achiev­ing this would re­quire more com­pa­nies to en­ter ex­port mar­kets, ex­ist­ing ex­porters to ex­pand their reach and man­u­fac­tur­ers to con­tin­u­ous­ly im­prove their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

"It will re­quire busi­ness­es of every size to ex­am­ine their po­ten­tial be­yond our bor­ders. For Trinidad and To­ba­go, ex­ports are not mere­ly about sell­ing more prod­ucts. They are about di­ver­si­fy­ing our sources of for­eign ex­change, re­duc­ing our de­pen­dence on tra­di­tion­al sources of earn­ings, strength­en­ing our pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment," Ramkissoon stressed.

Al­so ad­dress­ing busi­nesslead­ers, fea­ture speak­er Pamela Coke-Hamil­ton, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC) said there is a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to change how trade works in the Caribbean, and draw in the right in­vest­ments to make that hap­pen.

"It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty in­formed, part­ly, by ne­ces­si­ty," she said adding, "We know what the shocks of the past few years have been like. The yo-yoing of tar­iff es­ca­la­tion an­nounce­ments and re­trac­tions is just part of it.

"But we are not alone in try­ing to chart a dif­fer­ent fu­ture through trade, one that will help di­ver­si­fy our ex­ports and our mar­kets, one that will help our pri­vate sec­tor move up val­ue chains, one that will draw in in­vest­ments that will not just boost the de­vel­op­ment of our eco­nom­ic sec­tors but will al­so tack­le prob­lems such as trans­port and lo­gis­tics that have long stymied ef­forts at achiev­ing greater in­tra-Caribbean trade."

Coke-Hamil­ton not­ed that ITC re­search iden­ti­fied US$499 mil­lion in un­tapped ex­port po­ten­tial to the Eu­ro­pean Union.

She al­so en­cour­aged busi­ness­es to ex­plore oth­er ecosys­tem play­ers, on how to make bet­ter use of the Car­i­fo­rum EPA and Carib­can—es­pe­cial­ly since, with the Carib­can waiv­er at the WTO still in place un­til 2033.