Since it was launched in 1999, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTMA) Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) has gen­er­at­ed US$1 bil­lion as of 2024 in trade.

This was re­vealed by TTMA’s pres­i­dent Dale Par­son dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view on Tues­day.

Start­ing with 15 booths and with on­ly T&T com­pa­nies, the TIC has evolved over the years, with 330 booths from 15 coun­tries rep­re­sent­ed as sell­ers and 27 coun­tries rep­re­sent­ed as buy­ers.

“We’re ex­pect­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 vis­i­tors this year. We have reg­is­tered, so far, a lit­tle over 25,000 and over 3,000 in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers.”  

Par­son not­ed that the phys­i­cal space for TIC is much larg­er this year with the ex­hi­bi­tion oc­cu­py­ing the en­tire Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence au­di­to­ri­um and main floors.

Par­son, who has spo­ken about want­i­ng TIC to be moved to its own home, ex­plained that a big part of the prob­lem the as­so­ci­a­tion is hav­ing with Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence is that every year the ex­hi­bi­tion is grow­ing, with more par­tic­i­pants and more booths, so the space be­comes cramped.

“A lot of the vis­i­tors and buy­ers that come are com­plain­ing about the park­ing and the in­abil­i­ty to move around as well as the traf­fic flow, etc. We are look­ing ide­al­ly for about 20 acres, which we have writ­ten about to the present gov­ern­ment too. I think they are sup­port­ing 20 acres of land for TTMA to erect our con­ven­tion cen­tre, which will com­prise a lit­tle over 250,000 square feet,” the TTMA pres­i­dent out­lined.

He out­lined that at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, TIC oc­cu­pies a lit­tle over 100,000 square feet and that is not enough.

“What we want to do is ex­pand the con­ven­tion space, and ex­hi­bi­tion space, two and a half times to 250,000 square feet, where we will have am­ple space to grow over the next 20 years. My vi­sion for TTMA and for T&T is to es­tab­lish this coun­try as the man­u­fac­tur­ing hub of the Caribbean,” said Par­son.

He be­lieves that by hav­ing a trade con­ven­tion cen­tre, of the pro­posed size, many ex­hi­bi­tions and oth­er shows could be held there, that would gen­er­ate in­come to al­low the fa­cil­i­ty to be self-suf­fi­cient. At 250,000 square feet, the TIC cen­tre would be the largest in the Caribbean,

TIC start­ed off at the Queen’s Park Oval, moved to the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in 2004, then to the Hy­att Re­gency, Port- of-Spain, an­oth­er year, and has since re­turned to Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence.

This year, Par­son said with a lit­tle over 3,200 buy­ers, the TTMA has arranged B2B meet­ings with lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.  

“B2B meet­ings mean that the as­so­ci­a­tion match­es these buy­ers with lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and these are face-to-face meet­ings.

“It’s not on­line or we­bi­na­rs or Zoom. What we do is we match face-to-face so that the buy­ers can see the phys­i­cal sam­ples of the prod­ucts that they are go­ing to buy and build a re­la­tion­ship with our man­u­fac­tur­ers here,” Par­son dis­closed.

He in­di­cat­ed that TTMA has in­vit­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar to the open­ing of the TIC, which runs from Ju­ly 17 to 19. The prime min­is­ter has not re­spond­ed as yet, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj is sched­uled to speak and 11 min­is­ters are ex­pect­ed in at­ten­dance.

The TTMA pres­i­dent said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion gov­ern­ment is em­pha­sis­ing non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my away from en­er­gy, which he said TTMA is all about.

Par­son men­tioned that the as­so­ci­a­tion is about grow­ing non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing in T&T to be­come the re­gion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing pow­er­house where all of the Cari­com, in­clud­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­ca can come in­ward to T&T and buy in­ward rather than go­ing to the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope or Chi­na.

Asked if the TIC as­sists with the for­eign ex­change is­sue, the TTMA pres­i­dent said “most def­i­nite­ly” adding the main thrust of TIC is host­ing these B2B meet­ings and match­ing buy­ers with man­u­fac­tur­ers here.

“It is about build­ing re­la­tion­ships and long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ships and not just a quick fix of one or­der and go. What we try to do is to fos­ter an en­vi­ron­ment where these two par­ties can meet and it could be mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the buy­er and to the sell­er. In that way, what we do is in­crease our forex ex­port earn­ings,” he said.

Fur­ther, he said non-en­er­gy forex earn­ings have been grow­ing steadi­ly over the past five years and part of his vi­sion is to al­most dou­ble it by 2030.  

“Right now, non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ers, and I’m talk­ing sole­ly non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing, lo­cal, in­dige­nous, non-man­u­fac­tur­ers, is just over US$6.2 bil­lion as of the close of 2024. My vi­sion as TTMA pres­i­dent is to grow that to US$10.6 bil­lion by the end of 2030. That will be on a con­tin­u­ous growth path ex­po­nen­tial­ly as we try to make T&T a forex-earn­ing, non-en­er­gy coun­try,” Par­son stressed.

By ex­pos­ing busi­ness­es to mul­ti­ple ex­port mar­kets, he said TIC low­ers de­pen­dence on the lim­it­ed lo­cal forex pool and opens it to tens of mil­lions of con­sumers.

With im­port sub­sti­tu­tion, Par­son said this pro­motes lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured im­port sub­sti­tutes and while main­ly ex­port-fo­cused, TIC al­so show­cas­es T&T prod­ucts to re­gion­al buy­ers who oth­er­wise im­port sim­i­lar goods from out­side Cari­com.  

• This in­tra-re­gion­al trade earns US dol­lars or oth­er cur­ren­cies while re­duc­ing the coun­try’s to­tal im­port bill, eas­ing pres­sure on forex re­serves.  

• Net­work­ing with trade mis­sions and em­bassies  

• For­eign trade mis­sions at TIC of­ten help fast-track reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals in tar­get mar­kets.  

Delv­ing in­to the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) sec­tor, Par­son said this seg­ment of the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try has been un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, as the amount of mon­ey they cir­cu­late in the econ­o­my is al­so un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.  

 “SMEs, I’m talk­ing about the peo­ple who pack nuts in bot­tles, pack chan­na in bot­tles, pack tamarind balls in bags, and make choco­lates. What they do is sell a lot of these lo­cal prod­ucts and ex­port them. These SMEs ac­count for over 30 per cent of Trinidad’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP). That is a sub­stan­tial amount,” Par­son em­pha­sised.

He not­ed that the sec­tor em­ploys over 90,000 peo­ple and dur­ing COVID-19, “when one lis­tens to some of these sto­ries, as to how the SMEs start­ed, it’s a re­al­ly good sto­ry be­cause a lot of them al­ready lost their jobs due to the pan­dem­ic and some of these busi­ness­es re­cent­ly as four years ago.”