An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

From mod­ernising ports and im­prov­ing cus­toms pro­ce­dures to build­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny, one of 2026’s Busi­ness Hall of Fame in­ductees, Ram­nar­ine Ram­per­sad, be­lieves T&T has the po­ten­tial to be­come a lead­ing trad­ing gate­way for the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, but must first ad­dress the in­ef­fi­cien­cies hold­ing back its com­pet­i­tive­ness.

The founder of Ramps Lo­gis­tics be­lieves the coun­try’s ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture and ex­pe­ri­enced work­force pro­vide a strong foun­da­tion. How­ev­er, greater au­toma­tion, ef­fi­cien­cy and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors are es­sen­tial if T&T is to at­tract more in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment and fa­cil­i­tate trade.

“Our biggest chal­lenge is not sim­ply ship­ping costs, but more so the ef­fi­cien­cy and pre­dictabil­i­ty of mov­ing car­go through our ports,” he told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing an in­ter­view at Ramps Lo­gis­tics’ of­fice in Cunu­pia last Thurs­day.

Ram­per­sad, one of the 2026 Busi­ness Hall of Fame in­ductees an­nounced by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, be­lieves reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies must place greater em­pha­sis on fa­cil­i­tat­ing le­git­i­mate trade while main­tain­ing their en­force­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“Mod­erni­sa­tion, au­toma­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty are our key dri­vers of ef­fi­cien­cy.”

He is en­cour­aged by the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion’s in­ten­tion to move to­wards pa­per­less op­er­a­tions by the end of this year, de­scrib­ing it as a pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tion that the coun­try is mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

He al­so iden­ti­fies Sin­ga­pore as a mod­el from which T&T can learn, par­tic­u­lar­ly in trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, au­toma­tion and ef­fi­cient sys­tems.

“Our vi­sion of a pre­ferred gate­way to the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, based on where we are and the ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ca­pac­i­ty that we have built here, is re­al­ly tremen­dous.”

That vi­sion is root­ed in the ex­pe­ri­ence of build­ing Ramps from a cus­toms bro­ker­age op­er­a­tion es­tab­lished in 1985 in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny with a pres­ence across the Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed States, as well as more re­cent es­tab­lish­ments in Mozam­bique and Venezuela.

But the jour­ney to that achieve­ment be­gan far from the board­room, in a large house­hold where hard work, shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and mak­ing the most of lim­it­ed re­sources were part of every­day life.

From the fam­i­ly farm to en­tre­pre­neur­ship

Ram­per­sad grew up in a house­hold of 11, with eight sib­lings, where his fa­ther’s earn­ings of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $28 a fort­night had to sus­tain a large fam­i­ly. Mak­ing ends meet re­quired re­source­ful­ness, dis­ci­pline and the con­tri­bu­tion of every­one in the house­hold.

The fam­i­ly plant­ed much of its own food and raised fowl, goats and cat­tle. As a young boy, Ram­per­sad helped milk five cows and en­sured the milk reached the de­pot be­fore 6 am.

“We nev­er looked up­on those days as hard­ship. That was sim­ply life. We worked to­geth­er, we shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and we learnt to make the best of what we had,” he re­called.

His moth­er was an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant in­flu­ence. He re­mem­bers her as an ex­cep­tion­al ad­min­is­tra­tor, ac­coun­tant and en­tre­pre­neur who man­aged the house­hold with re­mark­able dis­ci­pline and re­source­ful­ness.

Af­ter fail­ing the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion, Ram­per­sad se­cured a full schol­ar­ship to Bas­an­ta’s Pri­vate Sec­ondary School in Curepe, where he per­formed among the top stu­dents in his class. He re­turned to teach there for ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months af­ter com­plet­ing his stud­ies while seek­ing em­ploy­ment.

An op­por­tu­ni­ty in cus­toms bro­ker­age even­tu­al­ly came through his moth­er, who ap­proached R. Sat Ram­per­sad about a pos­si­ble po­si­tion.

Al­though uni­ver­si­ty re­mained an am­bi­tion, he chose to pur­sue the op­por­tu­ni­ty and de­vel­op his knowl­edge through prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Ex­pe­ri­ence be­came my class­room. I learnt from peo­ple, from chal­lenges, from mis­takes and from the op­por­tu­ni­ties that came my way.”

In 1985, dur­ing one of T&T’s most dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic re­ces­sions, he es­tab­lished his own cus­toms bro­ker­age busi­ness.

The ear­ly years de­mand­ed long hours and con­sid­er­able per­son­al sac­ri­fice. Ram­per­sad re­called work­ing through the re­ces­sion and some­times go­ing five or six years with­out tak­ing a va­ca­tion.

By 1991, the pres­sure had be­gun to take its toll. Recog­nis­ing that he need­ed to re­con­sid­er the di­rec­tion of the busi­ness, he took a month off and trav­elled with his wife and three sons.

“It gave me that re­flec­tion and redi­rec­tion to be able to see which way we were go­ing.”

The break al­so gave him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­assess his pri­or­i­ties and the fu­ture of the busi­ness. The com­pa­ny would even­tu­al­ly move be­yond cus­toms bro­ker­age in­to freight for­ward­ing, trans­porta­tion, ware­hous­ing and off­shore ser­vices, de­vel­op­ing an in­te­grat­ed lo­gis­tics op­er­a­tion.

As he re­flects on his in­duc­tion in­to the Busi­ness Hall of Fame, Ram­per­sad’s thoughts re­turn to the peo­ple and val­ues be­hind that growth, par­tic­u­lar­ly his wife Bet­ty, their three sons and eight grand­chil­dren.

He takes par­tic­u­lar pride in the com­pa­ny’s suc­ces­sion to the next gen­er­a­tion, with his sons Shaun and Rudy now con­tribut­ing to its lead­er­ship, in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion and de­vel­op­ment.

His el­dest grand­son, Liam, has al­so be­gun dis­play­ing an en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it through iTu­tor, an on­line ed­u­ca­tion­al plat­form launched in June to help stu­dents with their school cur­ricu­lum and ex­am­i­na­tions.

For Ram­per­sad, the ven­ture is an en­cour­ag­ing sign that the val­ues of en­ter­prise, ini­tia­tive and hard work are be­ing car­ried in­to an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion.

Build­ing be­yond cus­toms bro­ker­age

As Ramps de­vel­oped, Ram­per­sad recog­nised that cus­tomers in­creas­ing­ly need­ed more than cus­toms bro­ker­age. They want­ed a com­pa­ny ca­pa­ble of man­ag­ing a greater por­tion of the lo­gis­tics chain.

Shaun joined the busi­ness around 2003, and the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­gan ex­pand­ing its op­er­a­tions and ca­pa­bil­i­ties un­der the Ramps Lo­gis­tics name.

The com­pa­ny moved in­to freight for­ward­ing, trans­porta­tion, ware­hous­ing, off­shore ser­vices and in­te­grat­ed lo­gis­tics, al­low­ing it to of­fer cus­tomers a broad­er range of ser­vices.

“Give good ser­vice, and the mon­ey will come,” is the prin­ci­ple that guid­ed Ram­per­sad’s ap­proach to cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships.

He al­so recog­nised the lim­i­ta­tions of the do­mes­tic econ­o­my and the need to di­ver­si­fy the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue base and gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change.

“Hav­ing recog­nised the lim­i­ta­tions of the lo­cal econ­o­my in Trinidad, we came to the con­clu­sion that we need to be able to go out­side of Trinidad to be able to grow the com­pa­ny,” he ex­plained.

The in­ter­na­tion­al jour­ney be­gan in Guyana in 2013, ini­tial­ly with an in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for Caribbean pro­duce.

He not­ed that when Exxon­Mo­bil be­gan ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ties in Guyana in 2015, Ramps was po­si­tioned to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause of the ca­pa­bil­i­ties it had al­ready de­vel­oped in Trinidad.

The com­pa­ny sub­se­quent­ly fol­lowed multi­na­tion­al cus­tomers in­to oth­er mar­kets, pro­vid­ing ser­vices to the en­er­gy in­dus­try and de­vel­op­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions.

The es­tab­lish­ment of El Do­ra­do Off­shore, which sup­plies pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and man­pow­er to off­shore rigs and plat­forms, fur­ther strength­ened its in­ter­na­tion­al of­fer­ing.

Ram­per­sad did not pro­vide the per­cent­age of com­pa­ny rev­enue gen­er­at­ed out­side Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­di­cat­ing that the com­pa­ny’s ad­min­is­tra­tive team would have to sup­ply those fig­ures.

The im­por­tance of suc­ces­sion

One of Ram­per­sad’s great­est sources of sat­is­fac­tion is see­ing the next gen­er­a­tion take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the com­pa­ny.

A sto­ry told to him by his fa­ther when he was a boy in­flu­enced his think­ing about suc­ces­sion. It con­cerned an el­der­ly shop­keep­er who had be­come blind but con­tin­ued sit­ting at the en­trance of his shop be­cause he could not de­tach him­self from the busi­ness he had built.

The sto­ry re­mained with Ram­per­sad through­out his ca­reer. He un­der­stood that an en­tre­pre­neur could spend a life­time es­tab­lish­ing a suc­cess­ful en­ter­prise but ul­ti­mate­ly be­come an ob­sta­cle to its de­vel­op­ment by re­fus­ing to re­lin­quish con­trol.

“Learn­ing how to build a busi­ness must al­so mean know­ing when to let go. I did not want to be­come a pris­on­er of my own suc­cess,” he re­flect­ed.

When he turned 50, he ap­proached Shaun and com­mit­ted to spend­ing five years work­ing along­side him be­fore mov­ing away from the day-to-day man­age­ment of the busi­ness.

He want­ed his son to have not just re­spon­si­bil­i­ty but the au­thor­i­ty to make de­ci­sions, de­vel­op the or­gan­i­sa­tion and take it in­to new mar­kets.

To­day, he cred­its Shaun’s en­thu­si­asm, en­er­gy and vi­sion for much of the com­pa­ny’s de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly its in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion and in­vest­ment in new tech­nolo­gies.

He is al­so proud of the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team and wider Ramps work­force, stress­ing that tal­ent must be recog­nised on mer­it rather than fam­i­ly con­nec­tions or back­ground.

His oth­er sons have pur­sued their own pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers. Rudy is vice pres­i­dent of In­ter­na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions, while Rob­bie is an in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gist.

Ram­per­sad’s wife Bet­ty, a pro­fes­sion­al nurse who left her ca­reer to raise their three sons, was equal­ly im­por­tant to the jour­ney.

Liam’s iTu­tor ven­ture is par­tic­u­lar­ly en­cour­ag­ing to them as they watch en­tre­pre­neur­ial val­ues take root in an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion.

As he looks to­wards the next five years, Ram­per­sad wants Ramps to ex­pand in­to new mar­kets, strength­en its tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties and con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing fu­ture lead­ers.

His am­bi­tion is to build an in­sti­tu­tion greater than him­self, one ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for the present gen­er­a­tion, his grand­chil­dren and those who will fol­low.

For the 2026 Busi­ness Hall of Fame in­ductee, the great­est mea­sure of suc­cess is not sim­ply the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny he es­tab­lished in 1985, but the peo­ple, val­ues, and op­por­tu­ni­ties that will con­tin­ue long af­ter he has stepped away.