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President's Report
 To
be a member of a board representing manufacturers and
business leaders of Trinidad & Tobago; and further
to have attained the leadership role has been a tremendous
learning experience for me. This year (March 2003 to
2004) was both enriching and humbling. I am as grateful
for the educational benefits - a most intensive course
in trade and international relations - as I am for the
opportunity to influence the course of events on behalf
of TTMA’s membership. To be an active member of
the TTMA is a voluntary, public service endeavour that
I heartily recommend to anyone, and everyone, who loves
business and who loves Trinidad & Tobago.
At the start of the year, we were invited
by the Prime Minister to participate in an initiative
to provide full sustainable employment for our population.
We proposed that the light manufacturing sector offers
the greatest potential to create sustainable jobs for
a larger part of the population.
We recommended a five-pronged approach
which defined our charter for the year. The measures
promoted:
- Support for existing enterprise, which
currently provide approximately 50,000 jobs in the
manufacturing sector. We offered a TTMA-coordinated
task force to recommend improvements in taxes and
procedures, minimum wage structure, VAT and other
regulatory agencies such as Customs, Bureau of Standards,
etc
- Expediting sector studies. There remains
an urgent need to research and assess opportunities
for
- development in existing and new sectors.
The sector study on the Plastics, Packaging and Printing
industry has already provided information and strategies
to a viable cluster, with the potential to grow and
substantially increase employment in the next five
years.
- Strengthening of institutional and
regulatory public sector bodies as supports to trade
and export. These include Customs & Excise, the
Bureau of Standards, Plant Quarantine, Food &
Drug Divisions, and the Anti-Dumping unit. These are
the guardians of our consumers, and the only safeguards
for local manufacturers in a single market environment.
In the long term, similar improvements must extend
to the Environmental Management Authority, Regional
Health Authorities as well as WASA, T&TEC and
TSTT.
- Implementation of an FTAA information
programme to foster public discussion and drive negotiations
from Caricom’s and Trinidad & Tobago’s
perspective. We have been proposing that our small
Caricom states be accorded “special and differential
status.”
Lastly, we have been actively promoting
trade agreements across our region; as well as opportunities
from outside the FTAA region. The TTMA continues to
encourage manufacturers and business to take advantage
of trade missions as worthwhile occasions for investigating
and entering new markets. This year, we took trade missions
to Jamaica, Cuba and Costa Rica, our larger Caribbean
neighbours. The Costa Rica-Caricom trade agreement is
to be signed in March 2004.
One of the most valuable modern business
strategies is networking. The nature of an association
like ours is based in networking. Happily, we have used
seminars, trade missions and the highly visible and
successful Trade and Investment Convention to build
strong working relationships among manufacturers, and
with support agencies such as Customs, the Ministry
of Trade, TIDCO, the banking community and media.
I take this opportunity to thank the
banking sector - Republic, RBTT, Scotiabank, First Citizens
and EXIM Bank - for solid support of trade missions,
press launches, the exporters forum and quarterly meetings.
We also thank the management and staff of BWIA for their
effort in working cooperatively with the manufacturers
on all our overseas missions.
This was a year in which we have deepened
our understanding of the implications of the Free Trade
Area of the Americas. Strategies developed will hopefully
put Trinidad & Tobago manufacturers on a more secure
footing within our natural market, and help us to expand
our capacity gradually and steadily.
I am happy to report that by April this
year, the TTMA secretariat will be located in our new
headquarters building at Barataria, a worthwhile conference
centre at the crossroads of north, south, east and west
in Trinidad. Part of the plan for the four storey building
is to rent office space, while reserving enough for
our own use. For the speed with which the work has proceeded,
we thank...
We are also grateful for the generosity of member companies
who have contributed in cash and kind, and we are happy
to acknowledge these contributors in the list on page
... in this Report.
(WE SHOULD PUBLISH THE CONTRIBUTORS IN A SEPARATE LIST,
AS A LASTING RECORD.)
Manufacturing today is the most critical
and dynamic sector in our economy, with the capacity
to provide jobs, stabilise communities and drive growth.
We are not just entrepreneurs or profiteers. We are
the part of the private sector that integrates all the
elements of our economy to create a product, to create
culture and sustainability. We are risk takers and adventurers
- we will come up with a good idea and figure out how
to make the best product and a profit. In so doing,
we employ people. We buy raw materials and convert that
through the productivity of our enterprise into something
invested with native talent and value. Most successful
manufacturers are hard-working, frequently shrewd, people-pleasing,
business-driven people who have accepted responsibility
for their own families, the families of their employees,
and whole communities. Manufacturers do not like to
fail, but we will leave the business before we lose
their shirts, or if our personal survival is threatened.
We do not close down businesses just to put employees
on the breadline.
Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the other
Caribbean states, need enabling manufacturing environments,
that will encourage business persons to invest in “non
oil manufacturing.” In an enabling environment,
our entrepreneurs will rise to the challenge as they
have done in the past. It is worth noting that non oil
manufacturing grew in T&T when Oil was at its lowest.
The attention and support given to manufacturing by
government 30 years ago needs to be renewed and reinforced
with utmost urgency.
The TTMA recently embarked upon its own
strategy to promote awareness of excellent products
made in Trinidad & Tobago. We have a campaign that
will brand the best T&T manufactured products, Tried
and True. We have the support of the Ministry of Trade
and have developed the mechanics of the programme, to
the point of having 20 manufacturing partners who will
use the brand on their indigenous. We trust that as
the campaign rolls out, it will make us proud of our
manufacturing sector. It is hoped that Tried and True
could progress to a Caricom campaign effectively carving
out our Caribbean single market economy.
Through the diligent work of our marketing
committee, we have extended the MVA (Membership Value
Added) Programme across the Caribbean, with partners
from Jamaica to Costa Rica, Barbados, St Lucia, Guyana
and here in Trinidad & Tobago. Manufacturers are
encouraged to use their MVA cards to achieve substantial
savings on hotel accommodation, courier services and
marine insurance.
Our monthly newsletter, The Manufacturer,
was launched a year ago with the primary objective of
keeping members informed and in touch with the issues.
Feedback has always been invited and welcome. More than
anything else for this year, we would wish that more
manufacturers would volunteer to serve on one of our
committees. Hopefully, with the re-launch of our website
in the next two months, we will see greater interest
and participation in the ideas and advocacy of the TTMA.
To be a strong association, with a strong voice in our
communities, we need the input of every member.
We all realise that manufacturers cannot
exist or succeed on their own. We need the synergies
of a productive growth oriented society. To be sustainable
and successful, we require an enabling environment that
is based first and foremost in a motivated workforce
emerging from a population in which its most vulnerable
citizens have access to health, education, and quality
of life. We need security, and the ability to minimise
criminal activity.
Finally, as we continue to lobby
to be the site of the FTAA Headquarters, let us be mindful
of the role that Trinidad & Tobago, and the Caribbean,
can play in uniting the Americas. We have talked about
being the hub of north and south, east and west. We
need to actively set about positioning ourselves as
the Brussels of the Americas, the crossroads of North
and South, by upgrading the necessary legislative and
regulatory instruments; by educating and motivating
our work force; and last but by no means least, growing
into a country that is progressive not only in its energy
sector, but in its use of resources for a prosperous
healthy and civilized society.
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