Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As Southex marks its 34th year, CEO George Singh be­lieves the an­nu­al ex­po of­fers a valu­able plat­form for small busi­ness­es to thrive—one that should be repli­cat­ed to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment across the coun­try.

Speak­ing at the event’s open­ing day at Gulf City Mall, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Singh de­scribed the ex­po as one of South Trinidad’s most an­tic­i­pat­ed busi­ness show­cas­es. He not­ed that it serves as a kick­off for the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son. With the pop­u­lar car show set for Sun­day, Singh said he ex­pects the event to at­tract near­ly 10,000 vis­i­tors, bring­ing more cus­tomers not on­ly to the par­tic­i­pat­ing ven­dors but al­so to the es­tab­lished busi­ness­es in the mall.

“Southex over the years has al­ways cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for small busi­ness­es, and it has been used as a launch­ing pad for many small busi­ness­es that go on to be­come much larg­er and cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Singh Jr said.

This year, the ex­po fea­tures 40 busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing well-known names like PriceS­mart, Op­tometrist To­day and South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic. Singh em­pha­sised that the ex­po is a busi­ness-to-con­sumer show­case, giv­ing com­pa­nies the chance to in­ter­act di­rect­ly with cus­tomers. He added that at­ten­dees of­ten dis­cov­er new prod­ucts and ser­vices they may not have been aware of, al­low­ing com­pa­nies from out­side the area to ex­tend their mar­ket reach.

Al­though the ex­po is small­er com­pared to pre­vi­ous decades, Southex sold out all its ven­dor spots by Ju­ly. Singh not­ed that the team is al­ready con­sid­er­ing ways to ex­pand the ex­po with­in the mall for fu­ture edi­tions.

San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi, who vis­it­ed the ex­po, high­light­ed its role in sup­port­ing lo­cal eco­nom­ic growth.

Al-Rawi said one of the key ini­tia­tives of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment is lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, and he be­lieves Southex’s suc­cess could in­spire sim­i­lar events across the coun­try. He added that the gov­ern­ment’s Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme and the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny would fund ef­forts to spread such ini­tia­tives to oth­er re­gions.