Ky­ron Reg­is

Ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

By the year 2025, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has re­vealed that its new­ly launched man­u­fac­tur­ing strat­e­gy would pro­duce 40 large man­u­fac­tur­ers, who should in turn, be ex­port­ing $4bil­lion in val­ue.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the vir­tu­al launch of the TTMA’s Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ex­port Strat­e­gy, TTMA’s Pres­i­dent Fran­ka Costel­loe said: “To­day 20 of 1,154 com­pa­nies rep­re­sent $2.9B in ex­ports, that is 80% of ex­ports. To grow, we need more. We be­lieve that the man­u­fac­tur­ers amongst our 890 SMEs are go­ing to do that for us. By 2025, we should have 40 com­pa­nies con­tribut­ing $4b in ex­port.”

Ac­cord­ing to Costel­loe, T&T’s SMEs are the coun­try’s next gen­er­a­tion of busi­ness and big­ger com­pa­nies need to part­ner in our thrust for a stronger, sus­tain­able non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

Costel­loe added that over the past 10 years the av­er­age cu­mu­la­tive ex­port growth has been 3%.

She said the pre-Covid-19, the in­tent was to dou­ble 2018 ex­port fig­ure of $3.5B by year-end 2025, but in year 2019, the coun­try saw no in­crease over 2018. Fur­ther­more, Costel­loe con­tend­ed that 2020 has re­alised a 60 per cent de­cline when com­pared to 2019.

In or­der to re­verse the trend, Costel­loe said: “We must forge ahead with our vi­sion to sta­bilise, strength­en, and se­cure.”

The TTMA pres­i­dent said that this is im­per­a­tive to pro­tect 52,300 jobs, which rep­re­sents 10 per cent of T&T’s work­ing pop­u­la­tion, and to cre­ate al­ter­na­tives to oil rev­enues as the en­er­gy out­look re­mains un­favourable.

Costel­loe con­tend­ed that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of rev­enue to bal­ance man­u­fac­tur­ing with oil & gas is es­sen­tial for the coun­try to sta­bilise, not­ing, “the pri­or­i­ty must be on Man­u­fac­tur­ing.”

Al­so speak­ing at the launch, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon said that man­u­fac­tur­ing is a very im­por­tant pil­lar and a key dri­ver of com­pet­i­tive­ness in the econ­o­my as it is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the coun­try’s GDP and is a net for­eign ex­change earn­er.

She said that in 2019, the sec­tor con­tributed just over TT$30 bil­lion or 19.4% of GDP, grow­ing by 0.3%. Gopee-Scoon added: “Dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2019, man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ued to im­prove by record­ing an ex­pan­sion of 4.9%.”

The min­is­ter not­ed that the un­ex­pect­ed and un­prece­dent­ed im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, whilst high­light­ing the Sec­tor’s tremen­dous val­ue, has al­so ex­posed the fragili­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ing sup­ply chains in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

She con­tin­ued: “The Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic has no doubt had a sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive im­pact on economies glob­al­ly, but it is with great re­solve, care­ful man­age­ment and de­ci­sive lead­er­ship, that this coun­try con­tin­ues to pow­er through this chal­lenge and her­ald in a stronger and more trans­formed econ­o­my.”

Gopee-Scoon ac­knowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment is in full sup­port of the TTMA’s launch, as the ex­port plan rep­re­sents a har­monised ap­proach, which bodes well for the con­ti­nu­ity and ex­pan­sion of the Sec­tor.

The TTMA’s strat­e­gy, which was for­mu­lat­ed based on col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search shared by Ernst and Young, com­pris­es three phas­es - sta­bilise, strength­en and se­cure.

Phase one of the strat­e­gy will look at sta­bil­is­ing the do­mes­tic mar­ket, phase two of the im­ple­men­ta­tion, will re­cap­ture and re­cov­er the pre-Covid ex­port mar­ket share and phase three, will be re­fo­cused on grow­ing ex­ports by tar­get­ing and se­cur­ing new mar­kets and con­nect­ing mem­bers through busi­ness to busi­ness (B2B) arrange­ments.