GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

In 1999, T&T's non-en­er­gy ex­ports (mi­nus petro­chem­i­cals and iron and steel) reg­is­tered at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8.5 bil­lion.

In 2023, this fig­ure in­creased to $14 bil­lion (65 per cent in­crease), un­der­scor­ing the dy­nam­ic role and con­tri­bu­tion of this sec­tor to the na­tion­al econ­o­my, said Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon

She made the com­ments while speak­ing at the launch of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion(TTMA) Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) 2024 ti­tled, "Glob­al Hori­zons."

The launch, which was held at Queen's Hall, al­so saw the TTMA mark­ing its sil­ver an­niver­sary.

Gopee-Scoon not­ed that over the years, the con­ven­tion has be­come a ma­jor plat­form for col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­no­va­tion, and growth in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, re­flect­ing that when the first TIC was held in 1999, it fea­tured just 70 booths with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 par­tic­i­pants.

"To­day, 25 years lat­er, we stand in awe of the re­sound­ing suc­cess rep­re­sent­ed by the 280 lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al booths reg­is­tered for this year's con­ven­tion with an ex­pect­ed 20,000 par­tic­i­pants," she added. TIC 2024 opens to the pub­lic to­day at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya.

Fur­ther, the min­is­ter said this year’s theme, “Glob­al Hori­zons,” re­flect­ed a shared vi­sion to con­tin­ue to build a ro­bust and dy­nam­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor that not on­ly meets lo­cal de­mands, but al­so com­petes in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Go­ing for­ward, she said Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to forge ahead to se­cure new ex­port mar­kets for lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured goods, adding that in this light, T&T and and Chile com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions for a Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment in May 2024. T&T is ex­pect­ed to com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions for a Par­tial Scope Trade Agree­ment with Cu­ra­cao next week.

Fo­cus­ing on qual­i­ty, Gopee-Scoon ad­vised that man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts must meet and even ex­ceed cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions, adding that im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of T&T’s prod­ucts will not on­ly al­low for re­peat busi­ness, but will build this coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al brand and rep­u­ta­tion.

Navin Dook­er­an, CEO of the Ex­im­bank, who al­so spoke, un­der­scored that the en­ti­ty's mis­sion is to in­crease non-en­er­gy for­eign ex­change earn­ings with a core fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing the ex­port po­ten­tial of this coun­try as a mech­a­nism to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

"The man­u­fac­tur­ing forex fa­cil­i­ty has been a suc­cess be­cause of you, and I am pleased to say on its own, the fa­cil­i­ty is a net forex earn­er for the coun­try. We have con­firmed that US dol­lar repa­tri­at­ed back to Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­ceed­ed forex sold by over US$100 mil­lion per year.

"The Ex­im­bank alone has fa­cil­i­tat­ed over TT$130 mil­lion of cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in the last two years and the com­mer­cial banks have done a lot more," he said.

TTMA's Pres­i­dent Roger Roach al­so gave an in­sight in­to TIC 2024.

He said there are 320 booths from 293 or­gan­i­sa­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tion from 17 coun­tries. He said en­ti­ties range from craft to ser­vices to fur­ni­ture.

Ex­hibit­ing coun­tries in­clude Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica, Guyana, Mex­i­co, In­dia, Bar­ba­dos and In­done­sia.

As the TIC looks for­ward to cel­e­brate its next 25 years, the con­ven­tion need a space of its own, Roach said.

"For us to be called the in­dus­tri­al hub of the Caribbean, we need to build an in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion cen­tre in T&T for the tourism, cul­tur­al, ed­u­ca­tion­al and trade ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with such an in­vest­ment," he added.