T&T will re­ceive a US$18 mil­lion loan from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) to help ex­pand its abil­i­ty to of­fer glob­al in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled ser­vices.The project aims to help po­si­tion T&T as a re­gion­al hub for the pro­vi­sion of glob­al IT ser­vices by pro­vid­ing train­ing, in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion and brand­ing, and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing to im­prove the busi­ness cli­mate and reg­u­la­tions. The coun­try is well po­si­tioned to cap­i­talise on a world­wide trend to­ward out­sourc­ing of IT ser­vices.

In an me­dia re­lease, the IDB said T&T ranks well re­gion­al­ly for the qual­i­ty of its ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem, in­clud­ing math and sci­ence knowl­edge and man­age­ment train­ing."Its Eng­lish-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion is equipped with the nec­es­sary lan­guage skills re­quired by the in­dus­try. In ad­di­tion, the coun­try's IT in­fra­struc­ture is con­sid­ered among the best in the re­gion," the IDB said.

"Be­cause the coun­try's small pop­u­la­tion means the tal­ent pool is lim­it­ed, the project in­cludes cre­ation of a Glob­al Ser­vices In­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion Hub to pro­vide train­ing and sup­port ser­vices adapt­ed to the needs of lo­cal com­pa­nies and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors."The project in­cludes lease of a build­ing to es­tab­lish phys­i­cal space for the hub, cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tive work and in­no­va­tion, which will en­able small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es to in­crease their ex­port ca­pac­i­ty.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the project in­cludes cre­ation of a mar­ket­ing and brand­ing strat­e­gy and en­gage­ment with T&T's di­as­po­ra pop­u­la­tion to pro­mote the coun­try's im­age as a re­li­able provider of glob­al ITeS.The loan is for 25 years, with a grace pe­ri­od of five-and-a-half years.