Sean Nero

There will be greater scruti­ny of the op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness of state en­ter­pris­es, in­clud­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT), as the Gov­ern­ment moves to forge a new eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion for T&T, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie has said.

In the fea­ture ad­dress at Wednes­day's re-launch of C&W Busi­ness at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Cuffie said Cab­i­net has agreed to the ap­point­ment of a team head­ed by econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rance Far­rell to ex­am­ine the strengths and weak­ness­es of state-en­ter­pris­es and pro­vide cor­rec­tive mea­sures where ap­plic­a­ble. Far­rell will al­so chair the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board un­der the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

"We can­not ex­pect to do the same things and ex­pect a dif­fer­ent re­sult. Just like Ca­ble and Wire­less, we need to adapt if we are to sur­vive. C&W has been around, I am told, since 1866 and had not just sur­vived, but thrived in the face of changes that have led to the clo­sure of sev­er­al com­peti­tors in the course of the 149 years since then. The Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es that we need to change if we are to sur­vive as a pros­per­ous na­tion. We must in­no­vate. We need to trans­form. We have to find ways to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my in or­der to guar­an­tee our na­tion's fu­ture sur­vival," the min­is­ter said.

Cuffie added, "In­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) is trans­form­ing the way that we in T&T and the en­tire world, in­ter­act, recre­ate and con­duct busi­ness. In fact, the suc­cess­ful adop­tion and use of new tech­nolo­gies are cru­cial to de­vel­op­ing a more com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my. If we ex­am­ine the economies of de­vel­op­ing and de­vel­oped coun­tries, we would see that they have been trans­formed due to in great mea­sure to the in­cor­po­ra­tion of ICTs by the pri­vate sec­tor, as well as the state sec­tor."

He said some strides had been made in ICT use and pen­e­tra­tion but T&T needs to do bet­ter. While many busi­ness­es had in­cor­po­rat­ed ICTs in­to their op­er­a­tions, many small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and even some of the larg­er or­gan­i­sa­tions are still re­luc­tant to be­come ICT com­pli­ant due to fear of evo­lu­tion.

"This is due, in great part, to some of the bar­ri­ers to the adop­tion of e-busi­ness meth­ods. Some of our own process­es, in­clud­ing do­ing busi­ness with the state, be­long more to the ana­logue era," Cuffie said.

"In­creas­ing­ly, how­ev­er, we have over time been tak­ing small steps to ben­e­fit SMEs and the adop­tion of ICTs. These in­clude: TTBi­zlink which of­fers a va­ri­ety of e-gov­ern­ment ser­vices with in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty to more than a dozen gov­ern­ment de­part­ments. Over 1,000 busi­ness and in­di­vid­u­als are ac­tive users. Through this plat­form, per­sons are able to com­plete the doc­u­men­ta­tion for work per­mits, im­port/ex­ports per­mits and li­cens­es, com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion and goods de­c­la­ra­tion elec­tron­i­cal­ly, in­creas­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness."