Buoyed by the re­cent Cen­tral Bank’s ac­knowl­edge­ment of in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is hop­ing the mid-year bud­get re­view for 2022 will pro­vide the Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sec­tor with the means to con­tin­ue its on­go­ing re­cov­ery and fur­ther ex­pand its op­er­a­tions.

In a re­lease on Mon­day, the TTMA not­ed the re­cent Cen­tral Bank re­port which high­light­ed an in­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor for the first three quar­ters of 2021.

Pres­i­dent of the TTMA, Tri­cia Coos­al said, “TTMA is pleased with this re­port as we con­tin­ue to pur­sue our Ex­port Man­u­fac­tur­ing Strat­e­gy to dou­ble the lo­cal non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 2025.”

Coos­al con­tin­ued, “The Min­is­ter of Trade, the Ho­n­ourable Paula Gopee-Scoon, has played a sig­nif­i­cant part in this pos­i­tive in­crease as she con­tin­ued to work with the TTMA to en­sure cur­few pass­es were made avail­able dur­ing lock­down as to min­imise the ef­fect on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the sec­tor. Man­u­fac­tur­ers them­selves were in­no­v­a­tive, em­ploy­ing work from home so­lu­tions, more ef­fi­cient shift sys­tems and a greater in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy in dai­ly op­er­a­tions, al­low­ing for in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty de­spite the few­er man-hours worked.”

The re­lease said the TTMA was look­ing for­ward to the mid-year re­view as the ex­pan­sion of the sec­tor could earn much need­ed for­eign ex­change for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Coos­al added that while there was an in­crease in most sec­tors, the TTMA notes the re­port­ed de­crease, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the print­ing and pack­ag­ing and tex­tile and gar­ment sec­tors.

It said, “TTMA con­tin­ues to pur­sue ex­port mar­kets for all sec­tors of man­u­fac­tur­ing, in­clud­ing these two, as we re­sume phys­i­cal Trade Mis­sions. TTMA’s most re­cent suc­cess­ful trade mis­sion was to Guyana and our up­com­ing Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion - card­ed for 25th — 27th Au­gust, 2022 at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya — seeks to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sec­tor.”

The Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed that dur­ing the first three quar­ters of 2021, labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor im­proved by 36.7 per cent, re­flect­ing high­er pro­duc­tion lev­els along­side few­er man-hours worked, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s re­cent­ly re­leased An­nu­al Eco­nom­ic Sur­vey 2021.

It added that do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, as mea­sured by the In­dex of Do­mes­tic Pro­duc­tion, in­creased by 35.0 per cent dur­ing the first three quar­ters of 2021, while the In­dex of Hours Worked fell by 1.2 per cent.

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, the largest in­creas­es in do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion oc­curred in the as­sem­bly type and re­lat­ed prod­ucts (103.4 per cent), drink and to­bac­co (52.0 per cent), and food pro­cess­ing (28.3 per cent) in­dus­tries.

More specif­i­cal­ly, it added, these in­creas­es were pro­pelled by greater pro­duc­tion for met­al fur­ni­ture, al­co­holic bev­er­ages, grain and feed mills, and processed fruit and veg­eta­bles.

The sur­vey al­so not­ed that these in­creas­es how­ev­er, were tem­pered by low­er pro­duc­tion in the print­ing and pub­lish­ing (-11.1 per cent) and tex­tile and gar­ments (-2.1 per cent) in­dus­tries.

Con­verse­ly, it cit­ed, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor de­clined, dri­ven main­ly by a drop in do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion in both the up­stream and down­stream in­dus­tries.

Dur­ing the first nine months of 2021, the In­dex of Do­mes­tic Pro­duc­tion point­ed to de­clines of 5.2 per cent, 24.7 per cent, and 7.1 per cent in the petro­chem­i­cals, nat­ur­al gas re­fin­ing, and ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion of oil and nat­ur­al gas in­dus­tries re­spec­tive­ly, the sur­vey said.