T&T ex­ports are on the up.

Af­ter a dis­mal 2020, when the sud­den im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the sub­se­quent re­stric­tion meant to mit­i­gate the virus’ spread, this coun­try’s ex­port num­bers for 2021 have shown re­al im­prove­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon, T&T’s ex­port num­bers in the non-en­er­gy are even an im­prove­ment on its per­for­mance in 2019, in a pre-pan­dem­ic mar­ket.

“Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Au­gust 2021, to­tal non-en­er­gy ex­ports av­er­age ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.3 bil­lion per month, which is in an es­ti­mat­ed 43 per­cent high­er com­pared to 2020. When on av­er­age, we would be do­ing about $873 mil­lion. Fur­ther­more. I can tell you with the trend that we have seen, this av­er­age has sur­passed that for the same pe­ri­od in 2019, which on av­er­age was $1.1 bil­lion. As I said, now, we are see­ing $1.3 bil­lion,” said the Trade Min­is­ter as she de­tailed the ex­port num­bers for fis­cal 2021 dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate last Sat­ur­day.

She ex­plained that our lo­cal ex­ports have con­tin­u­ous­ly im­proved ac­cord­ing to da­ta post­ed ttBIZ link.

“T&T reg­is­tered 36 bil­lion dol­lars in to­tal Ex­ports for the nine month pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2020 to June 2021, which is $7.3 bil­lion or 25 per cent more than the than cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2020,” said the Sen­a­tor.

“What has hap­pened be­tween the pe­ri­od Ju­ly to Au­gust 2021. So that there’s a fur­ther, $6.1 bil­lion in­crease in rev­enues show­ing a much stronger ex­port base, of both en­er­gy and non En­er­gy Prod­ucts. As a mat­ter fact, when I look at the ex­port lev­els for fis­cal 21 for the 11 month pe­ri­od, end­ing in Au­gust, 2021, I can tell you that we are trend­ing up­wards in our ex­ports,” she said.

These fig­ures the min­is­ter not­ed were not be­ing padded by petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports which have tra­di­tion­al­ly bol­stered our fi­nances such as am­mo­nia, methanol, urea and am­mo­ni­um ni­trate.

She list­ed prod­ucts which have done sig­nif­i­cant­ly well dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“Our iron steel prod­ucts, our waste, and our waste and scrap iron ex­ports have gone up, ex­po­nen­tial­ly 102 per cent. Com­pared with 2020. An­oth­er 35 per cent when we look at 2019. Our food and bev­er­age sub-sec­tors have reg­is­tered an over­all 36 per cent in­crease over 2020, and we look at the par­tic­u­lar prod­ucts that are do­ing well our ce­re­als, our aro­mat­ic bit­ters, our non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages our al­co­holic bev­er­ages.

“Again, we have seen re­cov­ery with those prod­ucts. And we’ve seen an in­crease of about 24 per cent com­pared to last year,” she said while al­so point­ing oth­er prod­ucts with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor such as plas­tics, and rub­ber prod­ucts that saw in­creas­es (up 52 per­cent), glass prod­ucts (149 per­cent), while elec­tri­cal equip­ment, ma­chin­ery and parts, in­su­lat­ed cop­per con­duc­tors (110 per­cent).

Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Her re­port­ed per­for­mance of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor is eye catch­ing based on her num­bers giv­en dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion which sug­gest the sec­tor had a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry due to the neg­a­tive im­pact the pan­dem­ic had on the re­gion­al econ­o­my and much of our tra­di­tion­al trade part­ners.

“Ac­cord­ing to the re­view of the econ­o­my dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2021. The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor would have con­tract­ed by 10.5%. And we know that is an ac­count of COVID re­lat­ed is­sues, af­fect­ing Gen­er­al trade par­tic­u­lar­ly to some of mar­kets in the re­gion who have re­al­ly suf­fered on ac­count of their de­cline in their tourism sec­tors,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She not­ed that trade des­ti­na­tions be­came more di­verse amid the de­cline in re­gion­al trade with prod­ucts be­ing sent to mar­kets in Aus­tralia, Brazil, Nether­lands, Cana­da, Puer­to Ri­co, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Mex­i­co.

“That’s the kind of trend that we want. Not de­pend­ing on the Caribbean re­gion. Still de­pend­ing on them but of course, mov­ing in the di­rec­tion ex­tra re­gion­al­ly as well,” she said.

She how­ev­er stressed that it was im­por­tant to main­tain the Caribbean re­la­tion­ships, as they would re­main key com­po­nents of our econ­o­my. How­ev­er in the in­ter­im the Trade Min­istry had been mak­ing strides in de­vel­op­ing new trade routes and was in ad­vanced talks about trade with South Amer­i­can coun­tries Chile and Colom­bia as well as Pana­ma, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Chi­na.

“ Trinidad and To­ba­go would have signed a gen­er­al frame­work agree­ment with a ne­go­ti­a­tion of a par­tial scope agree­ment with Chile in Oc­to­ber. This is a mar­ket that we’re open­ing for goods to the ex­tent of of 18 mil­lion peo­ple. We’re ex­port­ing as it is, an av­er­age of 1.78 bil­lion dol­lars to Chile. It is a com­bi­na­tion of large­ly en­er­gy, but some non-En­er­gy Prod­ucts. So at this stage, we have com­plet­ed the first round ne­go­ti­a­tion in Au­gust 2021 and both sides were to re­view­er,” she said,”We would have dealt with non-tar­iff is­sues. So we are go­ing to the sec­ond round of ne­go­ti­a­tions in De­cem­ber 2021.”

She added,” We are con­tin­u­ing to work on the CARI­COM Colom­bia, trade eco­nom­ic agree­ment.”

Scrap iron

“We are look­ing at an ex­ten­sion of prod­ucts. This is al­so a good mar­ket for us as our ex­ports have av­er­aged in the vicin­i­ty of 1.1 bil­lion dol­lars. And again, we con­tin­ue to work. I had a meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Trade in Pana­ma, and we con­tin­ue to work on that par­tic­u­lar agree­ment as well and to im­prove our ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties there or so. In the Dom Rep we are even look­ing at in­creas­ing our ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties and al­so in Chi­na, with par­tic­u­lar prod­ucts.”

But not on­ly were the num­ber of trad­ing part­ners in­creas­ing, but al­so the num­ber of prod­ucts be­ing ex­port­ed is al­so ris­ing.

She al­so not­ed that based on the Caribbean Basin Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery Act, im­pact on U.S. In­dus­tries and Con­sumers and on Ben­e­fi­cia­ry Coun­tries 25th re­port re­cent­ly Trinidad, and To­ba­go’s ex­ports to the Unit­ed States has al­so be­come more di­ver­si­fied.

“That is we be­gan ex­port­ing a num­ber of prod­ucts to the US and be­came less re­liant on ex­ports of just a few prod­ucts. And that’s what we would have been work­ing on,” she said.

The Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced plans to di­ver­si­fy in an­oth­er seg­ment, fash­ion, as trade mis­sions to pro­mote this ex­port po­ten­tial were be­ing set up for fis­cal 22 with des­ti­na­tions in­clud­ing An­tigua, Co­lum­bia, Cana­da, Cu­ra­cao, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Mi­a­mi, New York and Unit­ed King­dom.