ExporTT to help local manufacturers

Addressing a forum, “Doing Business in Latin America” at the Hyatt Regency, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain, organised by the American Chamber of Commerce of Trinidad and Tobago (AMCHAM), Acting Chief Executive Officer of ExporTT, Dwight Brown, said 90 percent of this country’s non-energy exports are to Caricom countries and other regional markets. The forum was held on Tuesday.

He added that in August this year the ExporTT did a Market Interest Survey of 145 local manufacturers and found that 61 percent of them were selling their products to Caricom markets and another 12 percent to other islands in the Caribbean, meaning that 73 percent of this country’s manufacturers are focussed on Caricom and the Caribbean markets. He said the country has to develop strategies to push manufacturers beyond the Caricom/ Caribbean market.

He said that at Government and ministerial level there is significant interest in negotiating trade agreements but wondered what was the point of trade agreements if they were not being used by the local manufacturers.

He said that next year, ExporTT will hold a number of seminars to explain to manufacturers the contents of the trade agreements and what challenges still exist in these markets with which Trinidad and Tobago has reached trade agreements.

Brown said significant challenges still exist: telling businessmen that in the Dominican Republic, for instance, there is a rule that if the exporter gets a distributor that the company is bound to keep that distributor for life or pay to break the arrangement.

Brown added that in Cuba, there is a registration process which mandates a company wishing to export to that island to register its products with two main state agencies.

Brown said the registration process can take a year and payment terms can take up to a year and a quarter.

However, he said this country has had a Trade Facilitation Office in Cuba since the 1990’s and that office has developed an excellent business relationship with the Cuban government.

He said the office has had a lot of success stories and has been able to have business to business meetings with high level Cuban Government officials.

However, Brown said that in these modern times, some companies do not even have a website or a company profile and asked what was the point of looking to engage Latin America without a company profile in Spanish. He added that there was a bigger problem among local businesses, asking how many senior officials in local companies and even in large companies are bi-lingual or tri-lingual.

Brown also said that the Latin American culture is a very warm culture, telling the audience that the business persons they would meet in Latin American countries like to hug and shake hands. “You have to kiss twice on each cheek,” he said, adding that their business counterparts in Latin America would even want to know what school their children attended. He said local businesses cannot simply send a representative to any Latin American country “and tell them to go and get some orders.” He said the higher the level of company official who goes on the trip the better.

He said that just having trade agreements with the countries of Latin America will not significantly boost trade because those countries also have trade agreements with all the countries of the world, including China.

He said the trade agreements only level the playing field.