An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says its up­com­ing trade and in­vest­ment mis­sion to Cana­da will fo­cus on prepar­ing busi­ness­es to se­cure deals be­fore they board the plane.

Speak­ing af­ter yes­ter­day's me­dia launch of the Cana­da trade and in­vest­ment mis­sion, T&T Cham­ber CEO Dr Vashti Guyadeen said the Au­gust mis­sion would place heavy em­pha­sis on mar­ket readi­ness and sales train­ing, ad­dress­ing short­com­ings iden­ti­fied in pre­vi­ous over­seas mis­sions. Guyadeen said the first ma­jor dif­fer­ence is the lev­el of prepa­ra­tion busi­ness­es will re­ceive be­fore trav­el­ling.

She ex­plained that the Cham­ber has part­nered with Glob­al Tour­na­ments to pro­vide sec­tor-spe­cif­ic train­ing for man­u­fac­tur­ers and ser­vice providers, en­sur­ing com­pa­nies un­der­stand the Cana­di­an mar­ket be­fore at­tempt­ing to en­ter it.

"We look at all the pain points; we look at how do you break in­to that mar­ket, what type of la­belling re­quire­ment is re­quired, break it in­to the dif­fer­ent sub-sec­tors, what is re­quired for agri­cul­ture, what types of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion are re­quired. Nine­ty-nine per cent of the work is done be­fore we ac­tu­al­ly go, be­fore we trav­el," she said.

The sec­ond dif­fer­ence, she said, is teach­ing com­pa­nies how to sell them­selves in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Guyadeen said ex­pe­ri­ence from pre­vi­ous trade mis­sions showed many T&T busi­ness­es have ex­port-ready prod­ucts but strug­gle to mar­ket them ef­fec­tive­ly.

"We have re­al­ized that we are pro­duc­ing glob­al­ly, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ready prod­ucts, but we do not know how to sell," she said.

Par­tic­i­pants will there­fore un­der­go struc­tured busi­ness de­vel­op­ment train­ing be­fore the mis­sion.

"We walk them through how do you talk, how do you present, how do you dress, how do you present your busi­ness card, how do you or­gan­ise your ma­te­r­i­al, your col­lat­er­al, the ins and outs of break­ing in­to a mar­ket. That's the dif­fer­ence," Guyadeen said.

The Cham­ber hopes to at­tract about 40 firms to par­tic­i­pate in the mis­sion. Guyadeen said the ini­tia­tive is in­tend­ed to be re­gion­al rather than lim­it­ed to T&T.

She high­light­ed that Caribbean busi­ness­es have al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est, cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies across the re­gion to col­lab­o­rate and form joint ven­tures.

"We want to see the ac­ti­va­tion of the CSME, we want to see joint ven­tures amongst Caribbean firms as well," she out­lined.

The mis­sion will co­in­cide with the Trin­ba­go Fes­ti­val in Cana­da, a two-day event ex­pect­ed to at­tract ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70,000 vis­i­tors.

Guyadeen said the fes­ti­val pro­vides an ide­al plat­form for lo­cal busi­ness­es to show­case prod­ucts and ser­vices di­rect­ly to con­sumers and po­ten­tial com­mer­cial part­ners.

"What bet­ter way to mar­ket and sell your ser­vices and prod­ucts? It's a ready mar­ket," she said.

She added that Cana­da was se­lect­ed af­ter the Cham­ber sur­veyed its mem­ber­ship and found it ranked among its top five pri­or­i­ty ex­port mar­kets.

Al­so speak­ing at the launch, Cana­da's High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, Michael Ryan Callan, de­scribed the trade re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries as in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as glob­al sup­ply chains evolve.

"It's vi­tal. It's just ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial for Cana­da to di­ver­si­fy our trad­ing re­la­tion­ships around the world," Callan said.
He said Cana­da al­ready has a strong foun­da­tion with T&T through ex­ist­ing agree­ments, long­stand­ing com­mer­cial ties and a vi­brant T&T di­as­po­ra in Cana­da.
"The strength of the di­as­po­ra in Cana­da is a re­al en­gine for in­ge­nu­ity and ac­cess. So all the el­e­ments are there to make it a suc­cess," he said.
Callan al­so sig­nalled con­tin­ued in­ter­est from Cana­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­nies, say­ing firms re­main ea­ger to ex­plore in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties where con­di­tions are favourable.
"En­er­gy com­pa­nies, they're al­ways look­ing for the next thing. If the busi­ness cli­mate is ripe and the op­por­tu­ni­ties are there, Cana­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­nies will be there as well," he not­ed.

With in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets fac­ing con­tin­ued un­cer­tain­ty, Callan said the tim­ing of the Au­gust mis­sion could not be bet­ter.
"Cana­da is a sta­ble, pre­dictable, ac­ces­si­ble mar­ket for T&T to grow in­to," he said. "We have a lot of con­fi­dence and a lot of hope and a lot of ex­pec­ta­tions that this vis­it won't just be an ex­change, but it'll be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to set the con­di­tions for re­al deals."