GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent wave of busi­ness clo­sures, pro­duc­tion sus­pen­sions and re­struc­tur­ing an­nounce­ments have sparked con­cern among econ­o­mists and busi­ness own­ers, who urge that T&T pay clos­er at­ten­tion to re­tain­ing pro­duc­tive in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ing new in­dus­tries to re­place those that are be­ing lost.

The is­sue has come un­der sharp­er fo­cus amid a string of de­vel­op­ments in the in­dus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors in the past few months, in­clud­ing Nu­trien leav­ing T&T (Oc­to­ber 2025), the clo­sure of Readymix (March 2026), Methanex idling its Ti­tan plant (June 2026), and now news of Nes­tle pos­si­bly re­struc­tur­ing (Ju­ly 2026). 

Econ­o­mist Dr Jamelia Har­ris warned that while busi­ness­es nat­u­ral­ly open and close as part of the nor­mal eco­nom­ic cy­cle, the coun­try ap­pears to be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more busi­ness loss­es than gains.

“Busi­ness­es open and close and part of this is usu­al­ly nor­mal churn and what is termed ‘cre­ative de­struc­tion’ in eco­nom­ics. How­ev­er, what we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing late­ly is cause for con­cern be­cause we are see­ing the ‘de­struc­tion’ with­out the ‘cre­ation’,” she said.

Har­ris not­ed that clo­sures ex­tend far be­yond the com­pa­nies di­rect­ly af­fect­ed, of­ten trig­ger­ing wider ef­fects through­out the econ­o­my.

“These clo­sures di­rect­ly im­pact on jobs. When peo­ple lose their jobs and their in­come falls, spend­ing falls too, so there are knock-on mul­ti­pli­er ef­fects in oth­er sec­tors of the econ­o­my,” she said.

Har­ris ex­pressed par­tic­u­lar con­cern about clo­sures in pro­duc­tive sec­tors such as man­u­fac­tur­ing and in­dus­try, ar­gu­ing that they pose longer-term risks to eco­nom­ic growth and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

“Clo­sure of these types of busi­ness­es di­rect­ly af­fects our forex sit­u­a­tion through a com­bi­na­tion of few­er ex­ports and al­so the po­ten­tial for more im­ports if we then need to im­port things we once pro­duced,” she said.

Us­ing Nestlé as an ex­am­ple, Har­ris not­ed that if prod­ucts cur­rent­ly man­u­fac­tured lo­cal­ly even­tu­al­ly need to be im­port­ed, de­mand for scarce for­eign ex­change could in­crease.

She al­so warned that the loss of man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties of­ten re­sults in the ero­sion of tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and in­dus­tri­al knowl­edge.

“When we lose man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, we don’t just lose jobs; we of­ten lose know-how in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor too,” Har­ris said.

The econ­o­mist al­so point­ed to a steady de­cline in man­u­fac­tur­ing em­ploy­ment, not­ing the sec­tor ac­count­ed for about ten per cent of em­ploy­ment in 2005, falling to eight per cent in 2015 and around sev­en per cent to­day. How­ev­er, econ­o­mist Dr Ralph Hen­ry be­lieves the sit­u­a­tion sur­round­ing Nestlé may be more com­plex than a sim­ple re­flec­tion of T&T’s in­vest­ment cli­mate.

“It might have more to do with the in­ter­nals of Nestlé,” Hen­ry said, not­ing that multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies of­ten make de­ci­sions based on wider cor­po­rate strate­gies rather than sole­ly on con­di­tions in any sin­gle coun­try.

He point­ed to Unilever’s de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions in T&T sev­er­al years ago and con­sol­i­date pro­duc­tion else­where in the Caribbean while con­tin­u­ing to serve the lo­cal mar­ket.

“Unilever left and went some­where else in the Caribbean and con­sol­i­dat­ed their op­er­a­tions there, and con­tin­ued to sup­ply us with ma­te­ri­als here,” he said.

Hen­ry ac­knowl­edged that any sig­nif­i­cant re­struc­tur­ing by Nestlé would, nonethe­less, be an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment giv­en the com­pa­ny’s long his­to­ry and role in the lo­cal econ­o­my.

At one stage, he not­ed, Nestlé played a sig­nif­i­cant role in sup­port­ing T&T’s dairy in­dus­try through its lo­cal op­er­a­tions.

“I sup­pose we don’t have a dairy in­dus­try any longer, but they were very in­stru­men­tal in sup­port­ing it,” Hen­ry said as he al­so ar­gued that com­pa­nies such as Nestlé, Carib Brew­ery and Unilever col­lec­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ed a man­u­fac­tur­ing clus­ter that could have served as a foun­da­tion for broad­er food and bev­er­age de­vel­op­ment.

Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (GT­CIC) pres­i­dent Ra­mon Gre­go­rio echoed con­cerns about the re­cent clo­sures and sus­pen­sions, say­ing they un­der­score the im­por­tance of con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween pol­i­cy­mak­ers and ma­jor in­vestors.

“There is val­ue in main­tain­ing reg­u­lar di­a­logue with multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and ma­jor em­ploy­ers to bet­ter un­der­stand the chal­lenges they face, whether re­lat­ed to com­pet­i­tive­ness, in­fra­struc­ture, reg­u­la­tion, labour, en­er­gy costs, or broad­er eco­nom­ic on­di­tions,” Gre­go­rio said.

He ar­gued that en­gage­ment should be fo­cused on iden­ti­fy­ing bar­ri­ers to do­ing busi­ness and im­prov­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness rather than sim­ply of­fer­ing in­cen­tives.

“By lis­ten­ing to busi­ness con­cerns, iden­ti­fy­ing sys­temic ob­sta­cles and work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly on prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions, the Gov­ern­ment can strength­en in­vestor con­fi­dence, pro­tect jobs and en­cour­age sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth,” he ad­vised.