Twen­ty-two com­pa­nies across var­i­ous sec­tors will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a trade mis­sion to St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines from Oc­to­ber 21 to 25. The trade mis­sion will be led by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).  

Some sec­tors par­tic­i­pat­ing in the trade mis­sion are food and bev­er­age, con­struc­tion, chem­i­cals, house­hold prod­ucts, ship­ping and lo­gis­tics, print­ing and pack­ag­ing, HVAC ser­vices, au­to­mo­tive, safe­ty, and pro­fes­sion­al and IT ser­vices.

The TTMA news re­lease yes­ter­day said some of the com­pa­nies in­clude SMEs and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es, such as Mac’s Sea­son­ing & Sauces, Punchy Punch Drink Ltd, Gem Print­ery Ltd, and Sty­ro­foams Ltd just to name a few.  

Su­san Singh-Seer­at­tan, the di­rec­tor of Trade Fa­cil­i­ta­tion at the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, will rep­re­sent the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try on the mis­sion. 

The TTMA says the mis­sion aims to ex­pand the ex­port foot­print of T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in­to East­ern Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.  

Al­so, TTMA is seek­ing to help par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies se­cure new con­tacts and busi­ness deals through face-to-face meet­ings, net­work­ing events, and site vis­its, there­by en­hanc­ing their ex­port po­ten­tial and mar­ket pres­ence in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines. 

Dr. Mahin­dra Ramdeen, CEO of TTMA, com­ment­ed on the mis­sion, stat­ing, “Our mis­sion to St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines aims to bol­ster the con­tri­bu­tion of T&T’s non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, specif­i­cal­ly with the in­tent to as­sist our SMEs with mar­ket en­try and the ex­pan­sion of ex­ports. By cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for our man­u­fac­tur­ers to es­tab­lish and strength­en busi­ness re­la­tion­ships, we aim to dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.” 

In pro­vid­ing more con­text as to the trade re­la­tion val­ue, the TTMA said T&T con­tin­ues to en­joy a favourable trade bal­ance with St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines hav­ing ex­port­ed a to­tal of US$32.1M worth of goods and ser­vices in 2022 and im­port­ed US$1.76M worth of prod­ucts over the same pe­ri­od.  

Top ex­ports were flavoured wa­ter ($3.21M), baked goods ($2.7M), and pe­tro­le­um gas ($2.67M), while top im­ports were cas­sa­va ($999K), spices ($234K) and ba­nanas ($114K). St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines re­mains an im­por­tant part­ner for T&T’s sup­ply of root crops such as dasheen, cas­sa­va, tan­nia, yam and gin­ger.  

Fur­ther, the as­so­ci­a­tion said in 2017, the gov­ern­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go and St. Vin­cent & the Grenadines signed an EC$20,000 trade arrange­ment to ex­port pro­duce week­ly from St. Vin­cent to Trinidad, in an at­tempt to in­crease the is­land’s ex­ports to tra­di­tion­al mar­kets in the Cari­com re­gion.