Southex Trade Show Pro­mo­tions di­rec­tor Ra­jkavir Singh says de­spite the state of the econ­o­my, over 30 busi­ness­es have joined the Southex In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­po at Gulf City, dis­play­ing a range of lo­cal prod­ucts, mer­chan­dise and fu­el-ef­fi­cient ve­hi­cles.

Among them was ANSA Mo­tors, which fea­tured its pro­mo­tion­al sev­en-seater XPander Cross at $239,000.

Speak­ing to re­porters, Singh said the Ex­po had been sold out.

“This is a hall­mark that the econ­o­my is re­cov­er­ing. A lot of peo­ple couldn’t be part of it. Some busi­ness­es have closed down. We are see­ing a lot of peo­ple try­ing to re-stim­u­late the econ­o­my. We are hap­py 30 peo­ple took part. It’s a lot of mon­ey hir­ing staff, fix­ing a booth and putting out a pre­sen­ta­tion,” he said.

“We have a vast ar­ray of prod­ucts, from car parts, as­set man­age­ment, in­sur­ance, food prod­ucts and even com­pa­nies from To­ba­go.”

He said Southex has been try­ing to keep afloat dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, adding dig­i­tal prod­ucts were in­tro­duced by Southex and Chut­ney So­ca Monarch was now be­ing streamed.

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said he was proud the Southex Ex­po had con­tin­ued the tra­di­tion of hav­ing the event, which will con­tin­ue un­til Sun­day, in Gulf City.

“Southex has grown and even though we are in a strug­gling econ­o­my, busi­ness­es have con­tin­ued to show con­fi­dence to dis­play their goods and ser­vices to ad­ver­tise that the south­ern busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is here to stay. San Fer­nan­do has the best deals and dis­counts., the best goods and ser­vices in the coun­try,” he said.

He added: “Food prices and trans­port costs have in­creased, goods and gro­ceries have gone up. We have to buy less if we can, we have to shop around for bet­ter deals. Some busi­ness­peo­ple and en­tre­pre­neurs are un­scrupu­lous. Once they an­nounced ship­ping costs have gone up, the goods went up overnight with­out a new ship­ment com­ing in­to the coun­try. This is not fair to the cus­tomer who has had the same salary for so many years and has to face cost tripling over the past three years. This is un­for­tu­nate.”

Singh chal­lenged Port-of-Spain busi­ness own­ers to fol­low in the foot­steps of the San Fer­nan­do en­tre­pre­neurs.