The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) has ap­proved a US$25 mil­lion loan to T&T to this coun­try im­prove its trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion process­es, part of an ef­fort to boost and di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

The loan will help strength­en the Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow for Trade and Busi­ness Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Project (TTBi­zLink), a se­cure busi­ness por­tal cre­at­ed in 2009 that sim­pli­fies for­eign trade and busi­ness process­es by pro­vid­ing around-the-clock ac­cess to rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

The plat­form seeks to sub­stan­tial­ly re­duce time and costs of trade and busi­ness trans­ac­tions for pri­vate sec­tor users while gath­er­ing and shar­ing rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion among gov­ern­ment agen­cies to sim­pli­fy process­es and op­ti­mise rev­enue col­lec­tion.

The 25-year loan will sup­port busi­ness pro­cess­ing reengi­neer­ing and risk man­age­ment for gov­ern­ment agen­cies, an e-pay­ment so­lu­tion, the con­nec­tion with ports and cus­toms sys­tems, an in­ter­modal lo­gis­tics plat­form, and the in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty with oth­er sin­gle win­dows, among oth­er things.

More than 70 coun­tries around the world have im­ple­ment­ed sin­gle-win­dow sys­tems, and mul­ti­ple stud­ies have shown that they ex­pe­ri­ence sub­stan­tial cost and time sav­ings and en­hanced trans­paren­cy and in­ter­a­gency col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Mex­i­co, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Chile and Pe­ru are among the coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca that al­ready have ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments thanks to their sin­gle win­dow pro­grammes.