An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Twen­ty-one pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor com­pa­nies are head­ing to Ghana on a trade mis­sion to ex­pand busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond the tra­di­tion­al Cari­com/Latin and North Amer­i­can mar­kets.

The trade mis­sion is be­ing led by Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion. The mis­sion is sched­uled to leave T&T on Sun­day and re­turn on March 17.

Some of the com­pa­nies that have gone to have dis­cus­sions with Ghana’s busi­ness sec­tor in­clude Bermudez Bis­cuit Com­pa­ny Ltd, Ramps Lo­gis­tic, KC Con­fec­tionery, An­gos­tu­ra, ANSA/Carib, Re­pub­lic Bank, Na­tion­al En­er­gy, African Cloth­ing, D # 1 Hard­ware.

Deyal Ban­doo, ex­port man­ag­er of KC Con­fec­tionery told Sun­day Busi­ness that Ghana has been iden­ti­fied as an emerg­ing mar­ket in Africa due to its grow­ing econ­o­my. This is why the com­pa­ny views Ghana as a po­ten­tial coun­try for ex­pand­ing its can­dy port­fo­lio.  

With over 100 years of ex­per­tise in pro­duc­ing qual­i­ty can­dies, Ban­doo said KC Con­fec­tionery Ltd plans to in­tro­duce its range of sug­ar con­fec­tionery, in­clud­ing hard can­dy, tof­fees, gums, and chews to po­ten­tial dis­trib­u­tors in Ghana.  

To fa­cil­i­tate this ex­pan­sion, he said the com­pa­ny will par­tic­i­pate in the trade mis­sion with TTMA, aim­ing to es­tab­lish fruit­ful busi­ness re­la­tion­ships, un­der­stand the mar­ket land­scape and cul­tur­al nu­ances, and gath­er knowl­edge of the trade re­quire­ments es­sen­tial for suc­cess in Ghana.  

“Giv­en its pop­u­la­tion of 33 mil­lion, which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent of the Caribbean, Ghana presents a sig­nif­i­cant growth op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers like KC Con­fec­tionery Ltd,” Ban­doo said.

Al­so speak­ing about the op­por­tu­ni­ties was Ramps Lo­gis­tics op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor, Rudy Ram­per­sad, who said the pur­pose of the trade mis­sion for his com­pa­ny is to look at a part­ner­ship in Ghana. The idea is to un­der­stand what op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist in that coun­try and how to cre­ate a lo­gis­tics lane be­tween Ghana and the Caribbean.

Bermudez Bis­cuit Com­pa­ny mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Ke­van Ma­haraj said the com­pa­ny is ex­cit­ed to be a part of the TTMA’s trade mis­sion to Ghana, as ex­port is a ma­jor fo­cus, and new mar­ket en­try is crit­i­cal for its con­tin­ued growth.  

“The main ob­jec­tives of join­ing this trade mis­sion are to un­der­stand the mar­ket and the peo­ple as well as to iden­ti­fy the right dis­trib­u­tor part­ner to move for­ward with,” Ma­haraj.

Delv­ing fur­ther in­to the im­por­tance of Ghana, Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon said in terms of trade bal­ance Ghana has an ap­prox­i­mate pop­u­la­tion of 33,475,870 (2022), with a nom­i­nal Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) of US$73.77 bil­lion (2022) and a GDP per capi­ta of US$ 2,203.60. T&T’s GDP was US$29.8 bil­lion in 2022, and its GDP per capi­ta in that year was about US$21,000.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2018 – 2022, the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that Ghana was ranked as this coun­try’s 82nd ex­port mar­ket and 126th source mar­ket for im­ports.  

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has main­tained a favourable trade bal­ance with Ghana, av­er­ag­ing $15.2 mil­lion in ex­ports and $0.6 mil­lion in im­ports an­nu­al­ly. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s trade bal­ance with Ghana in­creased by 24.7 per cent, mov­ing from a sur­plus of $23.6 mil­lion in 2018 to a sur­plus of $29.5 mil­lion in 2022,” she de­tailed.

Al­so, the min­is­ter iden­ti­fied that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s top ex­ports to Ghana in 2022 in­clud­ed both en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy prod­ucts such as liq­ue­fied bu­tanes, me­chan­i­cal ap­pli­ances, pe­tro­le­um oils, gas­kets, and pipes. T&T’s top im­ports from Ghana for 2022 in­clud­ed main­ly non-en­er­gy prod­ucts such as co­coa but­ter, cloth­ing, make­up, soap, and cas­sa­va Farine.

In­vest­ment in Ghana

Fur­ther, Gopee-Scoon said T&T’s pri­vate sec­tor has been in­creas­ing its com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty with Ghana in re­cent years, and to date there are cur­rent­ly nine com­pa­nies ex­port­ing to Ghana with the top com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, Car­di­nal Agen­cies Lim­it­ed, and Echo Ma­rine Ltd.

As it per­tains to the bank­ing sec­tor, she out­lined that in No­vem­ber 2012, Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed en­tered the Ghana­ian fi­nan­cial mar­ket through the sign­ing of a share sub­scrip­tion agree­ment and the ac­qui­si­tion of an 8.79 per cent stake in HFC Bank, Ghana.  

And in 2013, the min­is­ter said Re­pub­lic Bank in­creased its over­all share­hold­ing to 32.02 per cent, and then lat­er that year to 40 per cent, mak­ing it the largest sin­gle share­hold­er in HFC Bank. By May 2015, Re­pub­lic Bank owned 57.11 per cent of HFC Bank, be­com­ing the ma­jor­i­ty own­er and mak­ing the HFC Bank its fifth bank­ing sub­sidiary.

In show­ing the link­ages be­tween the two coun­tries, the min­is­ter said in De­cem­ber 2020, Ghana con­tract­ed the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to de­sign, pro­cure, con­struct, and in­stall crit­i­cal equip­ment re­quired by Ghana for its nat­ur­al gas pipeline dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture.  

“Fur­ther, in Feb­ru­ary 2023, Ghana Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny signed a Project Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agree­ment with its joint ven­ture part­ners to con­struct a sec­ond gas pro­cess­ing plant in Ghana at an es­ti­mat­ed in­vest­ment cost of US$700 Mil­lion.”

 Op­por­tu­ni­ties in Ghana

Fol­low­ing the 21st An­nu­al Trans-At­lantic Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum, in Ju­ly 2023, Gopee-Scoon host­ed a high-lev­el meet­ing on Au­gust 3, 2023, with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from TTMA, ex­porTT, and key or­gan­i­sa­tions from Ghana, in­clud­ing the Ghana In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Cen­tre (GIPC), to ex­plore new op­por­tu­ni­ties for bi­lat­er­al trade and in­vest­ment.  

The min­is­ter not­ed that in­ter­est was ex­pressed in de­vel­op­ing part­ner­ships to build the Ghana­ian tex­tile and man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tries, food se­cu­ri­ty, cul­tur­al goods, and ac­cess­ing the wider African mar­ket by cap­i­tal­is­ing on the African Con­ti­nen­tal Free Trade Area (AfCF­TA).

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she men­tioned that keen in­ter­est was ex­pressed in build­ing on T&T’s trade com­ple­men­tar­i­ties with Ghana, as well as op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­port the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan, and niche prod­ucts such as lo­cal­ly pro­duced al­co­holic and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages and choco­lates.  

“Both Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ghana agreed that there will be tar­get­ed trade and cul­tur­al mis­sions to ad­vance the growth and de­vel­op­ment of both coun­tries. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the TTMA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ex­porTT pur­sued the ex­e­cu­tion of a trade mis­sion to Ghana.”

Gopee-Scoon ex­plained that Ghana’s main im­port mar­kets are Chi­na, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the Unit­ed King­dom, In­dia, and Bel­gium. More­over, ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre’s (ITC) Ex­port Po­ten­tial Map.

Prod­ucts man­u­fac­tured in Trinidad and To­ba­go such as methanol “methyl al­co­hol”, mar­garine and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages are among the prod­ucts with the great­est un­re­alised po­ten­tial to Ghana.  

“The trade mis­sion is there­fore in­tend­ed to ex­plore these op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as sup­port the man­date of cre­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive firms in the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors and di­ver­si­fy trade by Vi­sion 2030: The Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy of Trinidad and To­ba­go 2016-2030,” she said.

The aim of the Trade Mis­sion is to:

· De­ter­mine busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the Ghana­ian mar­ket for Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pa­nies;

· Source pos­si­ble raw ma­te­ri­als and fin­ished prod­ucts for lo­cal pro­duc­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go;

· Look at pos­si­ble in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Ghana­ian mar­ket;

· Make strate­gic busi­ness and lo­gis­ti­cal con­tacts (e.g. dis­trib­u­tors, mar­ket agents, and com­pa­nies; and

· In­crease aware­ness of Ghana’s busi­ness con­tacts to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s avail­able man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts.