Shas­tri Boodan

Guardian Me­dia cor­re­spon­dent

Small ex­porters are be­ing urged to take full ad­van­tage of the ser­vices of­fered by Ex­porTT.

This call came from Paula Gopee-Scoon, the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, when she spoke at a cer­e­mo­ny to cel­e­brate the ex­port of a con­tain­er of food prod­ucts made by ASA En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed from its Mc Bean fa­cil­i­ties on Wednes­day.

Gopee-Scoon said many small busi­ness­men find some lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty when deal­ing with the banks to fi­nance their op­er­a­tions. Speak­ing from her per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence, Gopee-Scoon re­called when the busi­ness of her fa­ther, Ramwant Gopee, fold­ed in the 1980s.

She said when the TT dol­lar was de­val­ued, her fa­ther found him­self ow­ing the banks at a time when sales were al­so low. She said every­thing was tak­en away from her fa­ther who had bor­rowed a lot from the banks who in turn were on­ly too pleased to lend him mon­ey.

“One of the lessons my fa­ther taught me af­ter is nev­er make the banker your friend,” she said.

The Trade Min­is­ter said busi­ness­es can take ad­van­tage of fi­nanc­ing by Ex­porTT up to the sum of $250,000 for the pur­chase of ma­chin­ery and equip­ment.

“That $250,000 is wait­ing for you, you need not go to the bank. You put your mon­ey, we put ours and you can buy ma­chin­ery up to $500,000,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said Ex­porTT would al­so as­sist busi­ness­es with for­eign ex­change to im­port raw ma­te­ri­als in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing.

She said: “One of the fa­cil­i­ties you can look at is the loan de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, which has just been put on the mar­ket. It fol­lows the loan guar­an­tee sys­tem or loan pro­gramme which we did dur­ing the Covid pe­ri­od and here you can bor­row, I think is up to $500,000 from your bank with a re­pay­ment over ten years and with a mora­to­ri­um of two years.

“For two years you have noth­ing to pay while you are de­vel­op­ing your prod­uct with your new ma­chin­ery and equip­ment, get­ting your ex­ports go­ing, you have no re­pay­ments for two years, at a very low in­ter­est rate, not the bank rate you have by the com­mer­cial bank,” said Gopee-Scoon.

She al­so praised ASA En­ter­pris­es for its new line of Oh Snacks Chewy Gra­nola Bars.

She said the prod­uct is on par with im­port­ed prod­ucts and can do well when it comes to im­port sub­sti­tu­tion.

She ad­vised ASA En­ter­pris­es to in­crease its mar­ket­ing and in­clude in its ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign that the prod­ucts con­tain Trini­tario co­coa, a high­ly de­mand­ed, qual­i­ty item. Ar­fan Khan, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of ASA En­ter­pris­es, said the con­tain­er loaded on Wednes­day was des­tined for Ja­maica while an­oth­er one would be leav­ing for Bar­ba­dos next week.

Pho­tos Shas­tri Boodan

Rib­bon 01 and 02- Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, cen­tre, and CEO of ASA En­ter­pris­es Ar­fan Khan, third from left, cut the rib­bon to cel­e­brate the load­ing of a con­tain­er of Oh Snacks prod­ucts for ex­port to Ja­maica.

Paula con­tain­er 01 and 02- Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, cen­tre, CEO of ASA En­ter­pris­es Ar­fan Khan, right, and Chair­man of Ex­port TT Ash­meer Khan cel­e­brate the load­ing of a con­tain­er of Oh Snacks prod­ucts for ex­port to Ja­maica.

Load­ing- Em­ploy­ees of ASA En­ter­pris­es load con­tain­er of prod­ucts for ex­port to Ja­maica on Wednes­day