PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

In a bid to push growth amongst Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es in the cre­ative sec­tor, three busi­ness­es were of­fi­cial­ly signed on for the “Buy lo­cal, Build Trin­ba­go” char­ter yes­ter­day.

The ini­tia­tive, which is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, was signed by the Mu­si­cal In­stru­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pa­ny (MITTCO), Im­mortelle Beau­ty and the 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic dur­ing day one of the Cham­ber’s Cat­a­lyst SME Con­fer­ence 2026.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, in his ad­dress at the event, stressed that SMEs were strate­gic arms of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and it was cru­cial to push these com­pa­nies to grow be­yond the lo­cal mar­ket to an in­ter­na­tion­al scale.

“Our peo­ple must not re­main spec­ta­tors in their own econ­o­my. Very im­por­tant. We must build lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty, lo­cal own­er­ship, lo­cal con­fi­dence and lo­cal cham­pi­ons. This is how na­tions be­come strong, buy­ing lo­cal, build­ing," said the min­is­ter.

He con­tin­ued, “The buy­ing lo­cal is a strat­e­gy. It sup­ports jobs, it cre­ates val­ue cir­cu­lat­ing the eas­i­est pres­sure and for­eign ex­change. It strength­ens com­mu­ni­ties. It gives our pro­duc­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, farm­ers and ser­vice providers, the de­mand based dai­ly to ex­pand every dol­lar spent.”

Akua Lei­th, MITTCO’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said the sign­ing would help the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­na­tion­al push.

He said, “The Buy Lo­cal cam­paign def­i­nite­ly gives us the mar­ket­ing en­er­gy be­hind the brand. We are see­ing our­selves get­ting in­to more schools, more com­mu­ni­ties, not just lo­cal­ly, but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I mean, show­ing that it is a lo­cal­ly in­vent­ed prod­uct. I mean, we are very ex­cit­ed to be able to show­case our tal­ents and all the ex­per­tise that we bring for­ward to­wards pro­duc­ing a qual­i­ty in­stru­ment. So those things for sure, with the sup­port of the cham­ber and the Min­istry of Trade, we def­i­nite­ly see some growth hap­pen­ing with­in 2026.”

Kathryn Nurse, founder and CEO of Im­mortelle was al­so look­ing for­ward to ex­pan­sion fol­low­ing the sign­ing.

“Putting pen to pa­per to sign in ini­tia­tives that re­al­ly sup­port our lo­cal pub­lic, to be sup­port­ing our lo­cal busi­ness­es as well. Oh, it’s an in­cred­i­ble ho­n­our. The Cham­ber has al­ways been ex­treme­ly sup­port­ive of me and my ca­reer; giv­en me op­por­tu­ni­ties to gain more ex­po­sure all the time.

“And so I’m just re­al­ly glad that they see some­thing in me to con­tin­ue to be high­light­ed. So we are ac­tu­al­ly look­ing at, we are in the ex­port ac­tion pro­gramme with the cham­ber as well. And so we are look­ing at hav­ing a ful­ly ex­portable prod­uct by the end of this year, 2026,” she said.

Kee­gan Si­mon said his brand, 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic, which he has la­belled as the un­of­fi­cial of­fi­cial brand of T&T, would use the boost to fur­ther es­tab­lish a glob­al foot­print.

“This op­por­tu­ni­ty just so­lid­i­fies struc­ture for me and con­fi­dence. I’ve been do­ing this for many, many a year, and to have, as Cather­ine said, pen to pa­per, it gives me a boost, to give me more con­fi­dence so when I go out there, I know I have back­ing be­hind me,” said Si­mon, who had ex­e­cut­ed plans to have his prod­ucts sold on glob­al e-shop­ping plat­form Ama­zon last year.

The sign­ing, he said, would aid in his push to break in­to the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket with the Unit­ed King­dom as an ini­tial tar­get.