The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) con­tin­ues to be the voice of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, lead­ing the way to­ward di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, earn­ing much need­ed for­eign ex­change and cham­pi­oning the caus­es of its mem­ber­ship to se­cure ex­port mar­kets and en­hance the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Next year will be even more crit­i­cal for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, as it fo­cus­es on its goal, that was set in 2020, to dou­ble the val­ue of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ports by 2025, from a base fig­ure of $3.5 bil­lion in 2019.

This strat­e­gy is not just a vi­sion, it is a well-struc­tured plan that is al­ready show­ing promis­ing re­sults.

In out­lin­ing its plans to the Busi­ness Guardian, the TTMA said, “The end of 2025 is the cul­mi­nat­ing year for the TTMA to lead the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to dou­bling the val­ue of lo­cal non-en­er­gy ex­ports,” adding that the as­so­ci­a­tion will con­tin­ue its fo­cus on the SME sec­tor to en­able it to be­come forex earn­ers via ex­ports.

In this vein the TTMA has al­ready an­nounced its trade mis­sions for 2025:

• Do­mini­ca in Jan­u­ary;

• Bermu­da in Feb­ru­ary;

• A nov­el trade mis­sion on the seas in March, which is on a cruise ship that will land in Puer­to Ri­co, St Croix, St Thomas, St Maarten, Mar­tinique and Bar­ba­dos;

• Ja­maica in May;

• Guyana and Suri­name in one mis­sion in June;

• Chile in Sep­tem­ber; and

• Ex­tra-re­gion­al mis­sions to Chi­na in Oc­to­ber and New York in No­vem­ber.

Fur­ther, the as­so­ci­a­tion said it will con­tin­ue bring­ing mean­ing­ful meet­ings to T&T’s shores for its com­pa­nies via the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) 2025, which has al­ready been launched and will take place from Ju­ly 17 to 19, 2025.

Look­ing at what it achieved thus far, the TTMA said it is proud of the work done in meet­ing its tar­get de­spite the chal­lenges that were faced dur­ing the two-year pe­ri­od of COVID-19.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2024 Re­view of the Econ­o­my, the Min­istry of Fi­nance fore­casts that the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor would grow by 2.7 per cent in cal­en­dar 2024, re­tain­ing its po­si­tion as the sec­ond largest con­trib­u­tor to re­al GDP with a pro­ject­ed con­tri­bu­tion of 16 per cent.

This pos­i­tive out­look is pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by a strong per­for­mance of food, bev­er­ages and to­bac­co prod­ucts, along­side mod­er­ate growth in oth­er man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts and tex­tiles, cloth­ing, leather, wood, pa­per and print­ing, tem­pered by a mar­gin­al con­trac­tion in pe­tro­le­um and chem­i­cal prod­ucts.

It al­so not­ed that through­out fis­cal 2024, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI) con­tin­ued its vig­or­ous ef­forts to dri­ve the Gov­ern­ment’s man­date of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­pand T&T’s non-en­er­gy sec­tors.

In align­ment with this goal, the MTI im­ple­ment­ed and ex­pand­ed pro­grammes de­signed to train ap­pren­tices with­in the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors by bridg­ing skills gaps in the labour mar­ket, fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion, and di­ver­si­fy­ing this coun­try’s man­u­fac­tur­ing land­scape.

As a re­sult of in­creased out­put, the TTMA not­ed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2016 to 2023, non-en­er­gy ex­ports grew by 39 per cent mov­ing from $9.6 bil­lion to $13.3 bil­lion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, sev­er­al man­u­fac­tur­ing sub sec­tors ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant gains in ex­port over the fis­cal 2020 to 2023 pe­ri­od, high­light­ing the strength and di­ver­si­ty of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, in­clud­ing:

• Food and bev­er­ages 40 per cent;

• Pa­per and pa­per re­lat­ed prod­ucts 47 per cent;

• Plas­tic and rub­ber prod­ucts 66 per cent;

• Ba­sic chem­i­cals and fer­tilis­ers 46 per cent;

• Glass and glass prod­ucts 161 per cent;

• Fur­ni­ture and light fit­tings 34 per cent;

• Cloth­ing, tex­tiles and ap­par­els: 63 per cent;

• Wood and wood re­lat­ed prod­ucts: 46 per cent;

Fur­ther­more, da­ta col­lect­ed by TTMA re­veals that over $2.27 bil­lion was rein­vest­ed by its mem­bers over the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2023 to Sep­tem­ber 2024.

These rein­vest­ments spanned the ar­eas of food and bev­er­age; print­ing and pack­ag­ing; chem­i­cals and non-metal­lic; as­sem­bly-type pro­duc­tion; lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion; plas­tics, con­struc­tion build­ing ma­te­ri­als and high­lights that man­u­fac­tur­ers are seek­ing to ex­pand and up­grade as mar­kets con­tin­ue to ex­pand and open.

In 2024, the as­so­ci­a­tion host­ed trade mis­sions to Be­lize, Ba­hamas, Suri­name, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and a ground-break­ing trade mis­sion to Ghana.

Led by Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, this was the TTMA’s first mis­sion to the African con­ti­nent where busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties were ex­plored in a mar­ket with a pop­u­la­tion of 34 mil­lion and the gate­way to West Africa with a pop­u­la­tion of over 450 mil­lion peo­ple.

Fur­ther­more, the as­so­ci­a­tion al­so took its first trade mis­sion to Cana­da, al­low­ing ac­cess to a po­ten­tial con­sumer base of 40 mil­lion peo­ple.

These trade mis­sions al­so saw the par­tic­i­pa­tion of over 130 com­pa­nies, en­gag­ing in over 1,700 Busi­ness-to-Busi­ness (B2B) meet­ings.

The TIC, an­oth­er av­enue to pro­mote ex­ports, con­tin­ues to be largest B2B Trade-Show in the Caribbean.

At this year’s con­ven­tion, which was held from Ju­ly 11 to 13, the TIC cel­e­brat­ed its 25th an­niver­sary.

The event fea­tured 307 booths and five pavil­ion ar­eas, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from 312 lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, at­tract­ing over 21,000 vis­i­tors over the three days.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the TIC 2024 Busi­ness-Ed­u­ca­tion Se­ries in­clud­ed 13 we­bi­na­rs held from Ju­ly 8 to 9 and nine sem­i­nars, 427 Busi­ness-to-Busi­ness meet­ings took place, both vir­tu­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, as part of TTMA/TIC’s B2B Match­mak­ing Ser­vice from Ju­ly 4 to 13.

Re­gard­ing oth­er ar­eas, the TTMA strength­ened its ob­jec­tive to tack­le il­lic­it trade which is an­oth­er way it seeks to pro­mote ex­ports by pro­tect­ing mar­kets for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to con­tin­ue to grow and ex­pand in a fair, pre­dictable, trans­par­ent and com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

In 2024, TTMA met with the Head of the An­ti-Il­lic­it Task­force (AIT) for the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the first Com­bat­ing Il­lic­it Trade Sum­mit of Cus­toms Di­rec­tors-Gen­er­al to fur­ther this agen­da.

Fur­ther to this, TTMA host­ed its sec­ond An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Fo­rum on No­vem­ber 21 where the as­so­ci­a­tion brought to­geth­er dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers to spread aware­ness and strength­en re­la­tion­ships.

This year, the as­so­ci­a­tion al­so worked, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, to start a di­rect ship­ping route be­tween T&T and Cu­ra­cao, op­er­at­ed by ship­ping com­pa­ny Don An­dres NV (head­quar­tered in Bonaire, a Caribbean is­land in the Lee­ward An­tilles) the gen­e­sis of which start­ed when a trade mis­sion was tak­en to Cu­ra­cao in 2022.

This new route, the TTMA ex­plained, re­duces ship­ping time from 14 to 21 days to a three-day pe­ri­od, en­hanc­ing trade and pro­mot­ing ex­ports for T&T to this mar­ket.

Fur­ther­more, TTMA is an ac­tive par­tic­i­pant of the first round of ne­go­ti­a­tions on the TT-Cu­ra­cao Par­tial Scope Agree­ment, which have be­gun; the sec­ond round is sched­uled to Com­mence ear­ly in De­cem­ber 2024.

These ne­go­ti­a­tions, the TTMA said, would al­low lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to op­ti­mise use of the new ex­pe­dit­ed ship­ment when they close.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, TTMA al­so fo­cussed on the mi­cro-en­ter­prise and SME sec­tor in 2024 to en­cour­age these busi­ness­es to grow and ex­pand.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so host­ed two pop-up shops with 130 ex­hibitors from the mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es sec­tor so these com­pa­nies can con­tin­ue to have mar­ket pres­ence and grow.

Some of these com­pa­nies, which par­tic­i­pat­ed in TIC and the pop-up shops have since grad­u­at­ed to be­come part of TTMA’s Ex­port Ac­tion Pro­gramme (EAP), a for­ward-think­ing ini­tia­tive be­tween TTMA and Ex­im­bank, aimed at pro­vid­ing cus­tomised sup­port ser­vices to SMEs to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty and pre­pare com­pa­nies for their readi­ness to ex­port, and grow ex­ist­ing ex­ports.

Found­ed in Ju­ly 2023, the EAP Team has en­gaged over 20 SME’s and MSME’s across a myr­i­ad of sec­tors in­clud­ing the food and bev­er­age, clean­ing prod­ucts and sup­plies, bath and body­care and tex­tiles.

The EAP team works con­joint­ly with clients to iden­ti­fy gaps and pro­vide tan­gi­ble so­lu­tions that SMEs may not oth­er­wise have the re­sources to in­de­pen­dent­ly ac­cess.

Re­it­er­at­ing that the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in T&T stands as a cor­ner­stone of the econ­o­my, dri­ving growth, pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment, and en­hanc­ing the econ­o­my’s glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, the TTMA said this in­dus­try has demon­strat­ed re­mark­able re­silience and strength, even in the face of glob­al eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.