An­dre Wor­rell

The busi­ness process out­sourc­ing (BPO) ser­vice sec­tor has the po­ten­tial to con­sid­er­ably boost lo­cal em­ploy­ment by cre­at­ing more than 3000 high-val­ue jobs as well as con­tribute $1.1 bil­lion to gross do­mes­tic prod­uct, ac­cord­ing to CEO of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) Varun Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj of­fered that pre­dic­tion when he an­nounced the launch of this coun­try's first ever BPO Sum­mit which takes place from June 15 at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

He said the event de­signed to fur­ther en­hance T&T's po­si­tion as a pre­ferred lo­ca­tion for BPO ser­vices in the Caribbean. Com­pa­nies in­vit­ed for the sum­mit will span the bank­ing, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, in­sur­ance and out­sourc­ing sec­tors, with no­table mul­ti-na­tion­als such as Mor­gan Stan­ley, Wells Far­go, and AT&T con­firmed to at­tend.

"The sum­mit is an in­te­gral part of a larg­er aware­ness strat­e­gy de­signed by the TTIFC. Our vi­sion to be a lead­ing des­ti­na­tion for fi­nan­cial ser­vices means that we con­tin­ue to in­no­vate as well as to in­tro­duce prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions that breathe new vi­tal­i­ty in­to our pro­grammes and in­ter­ac­tions with for­eign in­vestors. This sum­mit pro­vides such an op­por­tu­ni­ty," Ma­haraj said.

TTIFC chair­man Richard Young said T&T is per­fect­ly po­si­tioned to of­fer world-class BPO ser­vices.

"Port-of-Spain has long been the de fac­to fi­nan­cial hub of the Caribbean. Our man­date is to ce­ment that po­si­tion by lever­ag­ing our ad­van­tages such as our prox­im­i­ty to North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, a ro­bust telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor, a re­silient econ­o­my, a high­ly skilled pool of hu­man re­sources and proven leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works."

Young, who de­scribed the BPO Sum­mit as an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort by the TTIFC to ful­fil its man­date of cre­at­ing a more di­ver­si­fied eco­nom­ic base, added: "Ex­tend­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to those com­pa­nies in bank­ing, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, in­sur­ance and out­sourc­ing to dis­cuss their in­ter­est in T&T is the nat­ur­al next step on the road to­ward our ul­ti­mate goal of be­com­ing a cat­a­lyst around which this coun­try's eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion oc­curs. Al­ready, the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor is one of the fastest grow­ing sec­tors and pro­vides the high­est con­tri­bu­tion to GDP af­ter the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor."