The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion re­cent­ly met with CEO of the Ghana In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Cen­tre (GIPC) Yofi Grant sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to ex­plore the Ghana­ian mar­ket.

There was al­so a com­mer­cial meet­ing and fac­to­ry tour of An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, a state­ment from the TTMA said yes­ter­day, as it al­so not­ed that An­gos­tu­ra shared in­sights on their African mar­ket ex­pe­ri­ence and out­lined the chal­lenges it faced in break­ing in­to the spir­its mar­ket in Africa.

The dis­cus­sion al­so in­clud­ed strate­gies to en­hance An­gos­tu­ra’s pres­ence in Ghana and the po­ten­tial for their range of prod­ucts, to be em­braced by the Ghana­ian mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMA, Grant re­it­er­at­ed the grow­ing trend of mixol­o­gy in Ghana and the po­ten­tial of An­gos­tu­ra’s prod­ucts and re­it­er­at­ed the need to set­tle on dis­tinct mar­ket­ing strate­gies for al­co­holic and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages in that coun­try.

The role of the African Con­ti­nen­tal Free Trade Area (AfCF­TA) in shap­ing trade dy­nam­ics be­tween the Caribbean and Africa was al­so talked about, the TTMA not­ed, adding that An­gos­tu­ra ex­pressed in­ter­est in ob­tain­ing a mar­ket en­try roadmap from GIPC and ex­plor­ing part­ner­ships with Ghana­ian dis­trib­u­tors.

Fol­low­ing the An­gos­tu­ra en­gage­ment, Grant vis­it­ed the TTMA’s of­fice where its Pres­i­dent Roger Roach high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of the as­so­ci­a­tion to the econ­o­my of T&T and not­ed that fur­ther­ing trade with Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ghana, is part of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s plan of ex­pand­ing mar­ket­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for its mem­bers.

Roach al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­stow hon­orary mem­ber­ship up­on Grant, and the Ghana In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Cen­tre sig­nalling the in­tent for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion with re­gards to bridg­ing the trade gap be­tween this coun­try and Ghana.

“TTMA is com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing trade ties be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ghana through the sym­bol­ic ges­ture of hon­orary mem­ber­ship. In this meet­ing, we ex­plored the po­ten­tial of the Ghana­ian mar­ket to T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers as an­oth­er av­enue for the TTMA to con­tin­ue its strat­e­gy to dou­ble the val­ue of lo­cal non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tured ex­ports by 2025 and forge a clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the two coun­tries as we ex­plore the po­ten­tial mar­ket for in­ter­est­ed man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“The TTMA will col­lab­o­rate with the MTI via ex­porTT and In­vesTT to ex­plore and fi­nalise arrange­ments to plan a trade mis­sion to take a strate­gi­cal­ly se­lect­ed group of com­pa­nies to Ghana in March 2024 with the ob­jec­tive of ex­plor­ing the mar­ket po­ten­tial for our prod­ucts and fi­nalise the best strate­gies for mar­ket en­try and suc­cess,” Roach added.