The trade sec­tor con­tin­ues to be chal­lenged by the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic in­clud­ing the ris­ing costs of in­puts due to dis­rup­tions in sup­ply chains and in­creas­es in freight ship­ping rates and trans­porta­tion costs, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on Trade and De­vel­op­ment’s (UNC­TAD) April 2021 pol­i­cy brief, some ocean freight rates have in­creased by as much as 443 per cent since the start of the pan­dem­ic in 2020, Gopee-Scoon stat­ed.

The min­is­ter told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers to trade which ad­verse­ly af­fect ex­porters’ en­try in­to mar­kets are al­so an­oth­er ob­sta­cle.

“The in­abil­i­ty of ex­porters to sat­is­fy the stan­dards and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in an ex­port mar­ket neg­a­tive­ly af­fects the com­pet­i­tive­ness and per­for­mance of their ex­ports,” Gopee-Scoon ex­plained.

Fur­ther, she said to in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to pro­duce price and qual­i­ty com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts for ex­port, man­u­fac­tur­ers need to at­tain the nec­es­sary stan­dards and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for their prod­uct of­fer­ings.

How­ev­er, to ad­dress this, Gopee-Scoon said the Trade Min­istry, through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive (EBI) by ex­porTT, has es­tab­lished the In­ter­na­tion­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Fund (ICF) which as­sists firms in achiev­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in food/bev­er­age and oth­er prod­uct com­pli­ance to meet the qual­i­ty and safe­ty stan­dards of in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and fran­chis­es.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Gopee-Scoon not­ed that the per­va­sive­ness of il­le­gal­ly trad­ed com­modi­ties such as al­co­hol, to­bac­co and clean­ing agents con­tin­ue to con­tribute to tax eva­sion and cre­ates an un­even play­ing field for le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es; it can al­so fur­ther un­der­mine pub­lic health.

For 2022, the Trade Min­istry will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op and ex­e­cute pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives to sup­port the achieve­ment of its man­date for busi­ness, trade, in­vest­ment and con­sumer em­pow­er­ment, Gopee-Scoon de­tailed.

Al­so, she said the min­istry is re­dou­bling its ef­forts to con­tribute to the re­cov­ery of the coun­try’s econ­o­my, post-COVID.

High­light­ing some of the ma­jor plans Gopee-Scoon said these in­clude ne­go­ti­a­tions for ex­pan­sion of par­tial scope trade agree­ments to deep­en ex­ist­ing re­la­tions and ex­pan­sion of pref­er­en­tial ac­cess and the re­moval of non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers with Colom­bia, Pana­ma and Chile.

Al­so, the min­istry will en­gage in con­tin­ued im­ple­men­ta­tion of the EBI in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and ex­porTT.

And fol­low­ing the par­tial procla­ma­tion of the SEZ leg­is­la­tion in Jan­u­ary 2022, the min­istry is cur­rent­ly work­ing to­wards the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the SEZ Au­thor­i­ty and the de­vel­op­ment of reg­u­la­tions to en­able the main pro­vi­sions of the leg­is­la­tion, Gopee-Scoon al­so not­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­istry al­so in­tends to es­tab­lish a trade and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion agency which will be the pre­mier agency for pro­mot­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in ex­port and in­vest­ment of the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pri­vate sec­tor.

Fur­ther, Gopee-Scoon said there will be in­creased in­vest­ment and the cre­ation of new eco­nom­ic spaces which will gen­er­ate fur­ther com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and new jobs. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $637 mil­lion in in­vest­ments be­came op­er­a­tional dur­ing Oc­to­ber 2021 to March 2022, Gopee-Scoon not­ed.

She said these projects cre­at­ed over 1,780 jobs in sec­tors such as man­u­fac­tur­ing, busi­ness process out­sourc­ing and agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tors, au­to­mo­tive re­tail, sports, fit­ness and recre­ation.

And, more im­por­tant­ly, Gopee-Scoon said the fo­cus will al­so be on en­hanc­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

She high­light­ed mea­sures in­clud­ing the launch of the trade and busi­ness in­for­ma­tion por­tal at the end of May 2022, which is in­tend­ed to en­hance the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of in­for­ma­tion re­quired for the busi­ness and in­vest­ing sec­tors (lo­cal, re­gion­al­ly and ex­tra re­gion­al­ly) for trans­act­ing busi­ness in T&T.

Al­so, the min­is­ter said there will be the mod­ernising of the leg­isla­tive and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work for in­ter­na­tion­al trade to ad­dress de­fi­cien­cies as well as con­sul­tan­cy to de­sign and im­ple­ment an en­hanced TTBi­zLink sys­tem due to be launched at the end of this cal­en­dar year.

Re­gard­ing tourism, Gopee-Scoon said the Trade Min­istry through eTecK has been fa­cil­i­tat­ing a first class ho­tel and prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment at Rocky Point.

This project, she said, will pro­vide a cat­alyt­ic stim­u­lus for the tourism sec­tor in To­ba­go and a plat­form for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and so­cial growth.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 750 peo­ple will be em­ployed dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase of the project, which is ex­pect­ed to com­mence with­in the next two years.

The re­sort will al­so di­rect­ly em­ploy over 220 peo­ple (and in­di­rect­ly, sev­er­al hun­dred more who will pro­vide var­i­ous goods and ser­vices) when op­er­a­tional.

The vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple will be from To­ba­go, Gopee-Scoon added.

In high­light­ing some of the achieve­ments of the min­istry since that mid-year bud­get re­view she said these in­clud­ed the Fair Trad­ing Act be­ing ful­ly pro­claimed in Feb­ru­ary 2020 and is be­ing pro­mot­ed through the T&T Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion to im­prove the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment of all sec­tors.

She al­so not­ed that the EBI was launched in Feb­ru­ary 2021 and in To­ba­go, March 2021.

She ex­plained it is cur­rent­ly be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by ex­porTT to in­crease the val­ue of se­lect man­u­fac­tured goods from $2.7 bil­lion in 2019 to $5.4 bil­lion by 2024.

“The EBI will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on three broad strate­gic ar­eas name­ly ex­port pro­mo­tion, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing,” Gopee-Scoon added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said as of May 9, 2022, un­der ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, the ICF has as­sist­ed 11 lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness of their man­u­fac­tured goods at an es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of $2.3 mil­lion.

Al­so, a na­tion­al aware­ness cam­paign com­menced on April 28, 2022.

In the area of train­ing, Gopee-Scoon said an ap­pren­tice­ship pro­gramme for the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor will be launched in June 2022, adding that a steer­ing com­mit­tee has been es­tab­lished to man­age and over­see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ini­tia­tive.

She out­lined that the ar­eas of fo­cus in­clude greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor, a re­li­able sup­ply of skilled hu­man re­sources to dri­ve and pro­mote re­search in­no­va­tion and the ac­qui­si­tion of trans­fer­able skills for trainees in tech­ni­cal ar­eas such as me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing tech­nol­o­gy, elec­tri­cal/elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy and in­dus­tri­al main­te­nance tech­nol­o­gy.

Gopee-Scoon al­so not­ed that 135 trainees are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from the first co­hort.

Turn­ing to To­ba­go, Gopee-Scoon said the To­ba­go e-Pavil­ion Plat­form is ful­ly op­er­a­tional with ten com­pa­nies signed on to up­load their on­line stores.

She ex­plained that the e-Pavil­ion is de­signed to show­case the prod­ucts of To­ba­go’s man­u­fac­tur­ers to in­crease brand aware­ness and ex­pand their lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomer base.