By TTC­SI Sec­re­tari­at

When Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es speak about ex­pand­ing in­to the Caribbean, the con­ver­sa­tion can some­times be­come con­fined by lan­guage, ge­og­ra­phy and fa­mil­iar­i­ty.

But the com­mer­cial Caribbean is con­sid­er­ably larg­er.

The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic of­fers a use­ful ex­am­ple. With a pop­u­la­tion ex­ceed­ing 10 mil­lion, one of the re­gion’s largest economies, a so­phis­ti­cat­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing base, a ma­jor tourism in­dus­try and a long-es­tab­lished trade re­la­tion­ship with T&T, it rep­re­sents a mar­ket that de­serves se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion by busi­ness­es look­ing out­ward.

More im­por­tant­ly, this is not a re­la­tion­ship we are start­ing from scratch.

T&T and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic for­mal­ly es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in May 1968, and trade has be­come an im­por­tant pil­lar of that re­la­tion­ship. Trinidad and To­ba­go main­tains a favourable bal­ance of trade with the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, ex­port­ing prod­ucts in­clud­ing fer­tilis­ers, min­er­als, food prepa­ra­tions, plas­tics, chem­i­cals and bev­er­ages, while im­port­ing Do­mini­can prod­ucts such as plas­tics, bev­er­ages, fruits and nuts, iron and steel, to­bac­co, pa­per and elec­tri­cal ma­chin­ery.

En­er­gy has tra­di­tion­al­ly fea­tured promi­nent­ly in that re­la­tion­ship, but it is not the en­tire sto­ry. Trade and in­vest­ment have be­come im­por­tant el­e­ments of the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship, cre­at­ing an es­tab­lished com­mer­cial bridge be­tween our two economies.

One im­por­tant part of that bridge is the Cari­com-Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic Free Trade Agree­ment. Signed in 1998, with its im­ple­ment­ing Pro­to­col con­clud­ed in 2000, the Agree­ment was de­signed to ex­pand trade through pref­er­en­tial mar­ket ac­cess, rules of ori­gin, cus­toms co­op­er­a­tion and re­duced bar­ri­ers.

At im­ple­men­ta­tion, Cari­com es­ti­mat­ed that more than 85 per cent of trade be­tween the par­ties would be­come free of du­ties and quan­ti­ta­tive re­stric­tions. For T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers, that frame­work can pro­vide an im­por­tant ad­van­tage, pro­vid­ed prod­ucts sat­is­fy the ap­plic­a­ble tar­iff treat­ment and rules of ori­gin.

But the Agree­ment was nev­er in­tend­ed to be on­ly about goods. It al­so en­vis­aged pro­gres­sive lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of trade in ser­vices, move­ment of cap­i­tal, in­vest­ment and deep­er pri­vate-sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion. Co­op­er­a­tion was con­tem­plat­ed in in­dus­try, con­struc­tion, tourism, trans­porta­tion, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, bank­ing, in­sur­ance, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, many of which cor­re­spond di­rect­ly with pro­fi­cien­cies Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es can take in­to ex­ter­nal mar­kets.

The ques­tion for ex­porters, then, is not sim­ply whether a trade agree­ment ex­ists. It is what they can do with the mar­ket ac­cess and com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships al­ready avail­able to them.

The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has built a size­able man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port-pro­cess­ing econ­o­my. Its free zones sup­port in­dus­tries rang­ing from med­ical de­vices and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic prod­ucts, tex­tiles and oth­er man­u­fac­tured goods, form­ing part of in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply chains serv­ing mar­kets be­yond the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

For a T&T man­u­fac­tur­er, this cre­ates two ways of look­ing at the mar­ket. The first is ob­vi­ous: What can we sell there? The sec­ond is po­ten­tial­ly more in­ter­est­ing: What does the Do­mini­can econ­o­my al­ready pro­duce, and what does it need to pro­duce it?

Fac­to­ries need pack­ag­ing and in­dus­tri­al in­puts. Man­u­fac­tur­ers re­quire chem­i­cals, equip­ment and main­te­nance prod­ucts. Dis­trib­u­tors re­quire lo­gis­tics and ware­hous­ing. Com­pa­nies need tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing, train­ing, mar­ket­ing and pro­fes­sion­al sup­port.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty there­fore does not al­ways end with find­ing a Do­mini­can dis­trib­u­tor will­ing to place a T&T prod­uct on a shelf. A lo­cal com­pa­ny may in­stead find its place with­in the Do­mini­can val­ue chain as a sup­pli­er to an­oth­er busi­ness.

Tourism cre­ates a

sim­i­lar op­por­tu­ni­ty

The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has built the largest tourism in­dus­try in the Caribbean by vis­i­tor vol­ume. But ex­porters should see more than beach­es, ho­tels and vis­i­tors.

Be­hind every ho­tel room is a sup­ply chain.

Ho­tels pur­chase food and bev­er­ages, fur­ni­ture, equip­ment, clean­ing and main­te­nance prod­ucts. Prop­er­ties re­quire se­cu­ri­ty, tech­nol­o­gy and en­er­gy so­lu­tions. Tourism de­vel­op­ments re­quire con­struc­tion, en­gi­neer­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture and de­sign, while op­er­a­tors need mar­ket­ing, train­ing, en­ter­tain­ment, dig­i­tal so­lu­tions and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

Seen through a trade lens, tourism be­comes much more than a sec­tor. It be­comes a mar­ket for oth­er sec­tors.

Con­struc­tion works in much the same way. In­vest­ment in res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, tourism and in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment cre­ates de­mand for build­ing ma­te­ri­als, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing prod­ucts, glass, plas­tics, fur­ni­ture and en­er­gy so­lu­tions. Around those prod­ucts sits an­oth­er lay­er of op­por­tu­ni­ty in en­gi­neer­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture, project man­age­ment, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ing, fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment and tech­nol­o­gy.

These are ar­eas in which T&T busi­ness­es al­ready pos­sess con­sid­er­able ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

Then there are ser­vices. An en­gi­neer­ing firm does not need to man­u­fac­ture a prod­uct to be­come an ex­porter. Nei­ther does an ar­chi­tec­tur­al prac­tice, ICT com­pa­ny, con­sul­tant, train­ing provider, lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny or cre­ative busi­ness. If ex­per­tise de­vel­oped in T&T is pur­chased by a client in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, that is an ex­port.

This mat­ters as T&T seeks to di­ver­si­fy what it sells in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Our en­er­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing base has pro­duced gen­er­a­tions of tech­ni­cal and pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise, while busi­ness­es op­er­ate in fi­nan­cial ser­vices, ICT, ed­u­ca­tion, en­gi­neer­ing, lo­gis­tics, cre­ative in­dus­tries and con­sult­ing. The chal­lenge is pack­ag­ing those skills for mar­kets that can buy them.

There is al­so re­newed mo­men­tum in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. Both gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to em­pha­sise trade, in­vest­ment and tourism as ar­eas for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion, along­side im­proved con­nec­tiv­i­ty and stronger pri­vate-sec­tor en­gage­ment.

For busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions and trade agree­ments cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment. They do not cre­ate the sale. That still re­quires mar­ket in­tel­li­gence.

A man­u­fac­tur­er con­sid­er­ing the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic needs to know who im­ports the prod­uct, who cur­rent­ly sup­plies the mar­ket, what tar­iff treat­ment ap­plies, how dis­tri­b­u­tion works and whether the strongest op­por­tu­ni­ty is with a re­tail­er, dis­trib­u­tor, man­u­fac­tur­er, ho­tel group, con­struc­tion com­pa­ny or an­oth­er com­mer­cial buy­er.

Ser­vice providers must ask equal­ly prac­ti­cal ques­tions. Which com­pa­nies need the ex­per­tise? Who makes the pur­chas­ing de­ci­sion? Is a lo­cal part­ner nec­es­sary? Can the ser­vice be de­liv­ered re­mote­ly? Are there reg­u­la­to­ry or pro­fes­sion­al re­quire­ments?

This is why di­rect mar­ket en­gage­ment re­mains im­por­tant. A well-struc­tured trade mis­sion should not sim­ply in­tro­duce a busi­ness to an­oth­er coun­try. It should short­en the dis­tance be­tween an ex­port-ready com­pa­ny and a rel­e­vant buy­er, dis­trib­u­tor, client or busi­ness part­ner.

The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic presents an in­ter­est­ing case be­cause many of the foun­da­tions are al­ready there: an es­tab­lished trad­ing re­la­tion­ship, a pref­er­en­tial trade frame­work, so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­dus­tries, size­able tourism and con­struc­tion val­ue chains, and de­mand for goods, knowl­edge, ex­per­tise and ser­vices.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty is there­fore not sim­ply to ex­port more of what T&T has tra­di­tion­al­ly sold. It is to look more care­ful­ly at how our man­u­fac­tur­ers and ser­vice providers can par­tic­i­pate in the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place with­in one of the Caribbean’s largest mar­kets.

Per­haps that is the larg­er point. When we think about re­gion­al ex­ports, the bound­aries of the op­por­tu­ni­ty should not be de­fined on­ly by the mar­kets that are most fa­mil­iar to us.

The Caribbean mar­ket is big­ger than we think.