Small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es in T&T are gain­ing a pow­er­ful tool to break in­to for­eign mar­kets as the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and the Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Ex­im­bank) pre­pare to launch Co­hort 3 of its Ex­port Ac­tion Pro­gramme (EAP).

By dis­man­tling the fi­nan­cial, lo­gis­ti­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers that tra­di­tion­al­ly keep lo­cal brands con­fined to do­mes­tic shelves, this prac­ti­cal ini­tia­tive trans­forms lo­cal busi­ness­es in­to in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors.

The hands-on sup­port is al­ready ev­i­dent in Co­hort 2, where pre­vi­ous­ly non-ex­port­ing busi­ness­es suc­cess­ful­ly con­vert­ed tai­lored men­tor­ship in­to more than US$80,000 in new for­eign sales be­fore their train­ing cy­cle had even con­clud­ed.

A re­lease from the TTMA ex­plained the pro­gramme has con­tin­ued to demon­strate mea­sur­able im­pact.

“Co­hort 1 saw ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 per cent of par­tic­i­pat­ing busi­ness­es se­cure new ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties, while Co­hort 2 com­pa­nies have re­port­ed new op­por­tu­ni­ties in mar­kets in­clud­ing Guyana, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, and the Unit­ed States. Oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing busi­ness­es have strength­ened their do­mes­tic mar­ket pres­ence through place­ments in ma­jor re­tail­ers such as Massy Stores and Su­per­Pharm,” it ex­plained. The TTMA added that ex­port readi­ness scored among par­tic­i­pat­ing SMEs and al­so im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der the EAP frame­work, with busi­ness­es pro­gress­ing from an av­er­age readi­ness lev­el of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 42 per cent to 87 per cent.

“Many SMEs have strong prod­ucts and strong am­bi­tion, but they of­ten need guid­ance to nav­i­gate the re­al­i­ties of ex­port­ing, The Ex­port Ac­tion Pro­gramme con­tin­ues to demon­strate that with the right struc­ture, sup­port and ac­count­abil­i­ty, our SMEs can com­pete re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly while con­tribut­ing to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion,” Mahin­dra Ramdeen, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TTMA, said.

Rep­re­sent­ing Ex­im­bank, man­ag­er, mar­ket­ing and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, Shel­don Thomas, fur­ther high­light­ed the im­por­tance of ac­ces­si­ble ex­port de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives for SMEs.

“The col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Ex­im­bank and TTMA con­tin­ues to cre­ate mean­ing­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es seek­ing to grow be­yond Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders. The re­sults achieved by the EAP demon­strate the val­ue of prac­ti­cal sup­port sys­tems that help SMEs trans­late po­ten­tial in­to mea­sur­able out­comes,” he said.

Mean­while, Kevin Tang Nian, lead con­sul­tant of the EAP, said the pro­gramme is built around prac­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tion and sus­tained ac­count­abil­i­ty, stat­ing, “Ex­port­ing is not a one-size-fits-all process. Every busi­ness faces dif­fer­ent hur­dles, re­source lim­i­ta­tions, and op­por­tu­ni­ties. The EAP was built to help SMEs iden­ti­fy their gaps, pri­ori­tise prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions, and take mean­ing­ful steps to­wards mar­ket en­try and sus­tain­able growth.”

The TTMA added that to meet grow­ing de­mand for busi­ness and ex­port guid­ance, it has al­so in­tro­duced an ex­port readi­ness scan (ERS), a fo­cused as­sess­ment de­signed to help SMEs iden­ti­fy ex­port gaps, op­por­tu­ni­ties, and prac­ti­cal next steps to­wards growth and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly where spaces in the full EAP are lim­it­ed.