The State can­not trans­form T&T by it­self, Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Has­sell Bac­chus has said.

Bac­chus made the state­ment while speak­ing at a vir­tu­al event host­ed by RBC Roy­al Bank T&T.

He said his min­istry is not “a panacea to get us where we want to go” but rep­re­sents a spe­cif­ic fo­cus of the Gov­ern­ment and its in­tent to “get us where we want to be.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Bac­chus peo­ple, not the tech­nol­o­gy, are at the core of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as he stressed the im­por­tance of part­ner­ing in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney.

He al­so com­mend­ed RBC Roy­al Bank for its part­ner­ship with the Ox­ford Busi­ness Group, which pro­duced a trans­for­ma­tion re­port that ex­plores digi­ti­sa­tion and a re­duced re­liance on cash in dri­ving post-pan­dem­ic growth in T&T.

Ti­tled “The Way For­ward: Cash Trans­for­ma­tion and the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my,” the re­port pro­vides in-depth analy­sis of the in­no­va­tions un­der way across the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, fo­cus­ing on key da­ta and in­fo­graph­ics re­lat­ing to the coun­try’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic land­scape.

It al­so ac­knowl­edges the im­pact the pan­dem­ic has had on the in­dus­try and iden­ti­fies the “new nor­mal” bank­ing trends that have since been trig­gered.

Speak­ing at the launch, Dar­ryl White, CEO, RBC Fi­nan­cial (Caribbean) Ltd, and re­gion­al vice-pres­i­dent, cor­po­rate and in­vest­ment bank­ing said RBC start­ed to of­fer its dig­i­tal so­lu­tions pri­or to the pan­dem­ic.

These in­clud­ed on­line bank­ing ser­vices and a dig­i­tal client ad­vice cen­tre, adding that tech­nol­o­gy has al­lowed flex­i­bil­i­ty in the bank’s op­er­a­tions, the abil­i­ty to bet­ter an­tic­i­pate client needs as well as cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for clients to ac­cess dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

“This re­port is an im­por­tant re­flec­tion of where we are head­ing as a coun­try. The glob­al pan­dem­ic put the need for digi­ti­sa­tion at the fore­front of many eco­nom­ic sec­tors, in­clud­ing bank­ing.

“By ex­plor­ing new ways of do­ing busi­ness with a fo­cus on dig­i­tal in­vest­ments, we can help en­sure that our busi­ness­es and econ­o­my re­main po­si­tioned to com­pete in an in­creas­ing­ly con­nect­ed world and trans­for­ma­tive mar­ket­place, no mat­ter the chal­lenges pre­sent­ed to us,” White said.

He added that this can yield tremen­dous ben­e­fits like fi­nan­cial de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic ad­vance­ment for busi­ness­es, con­sumers, and for the coun­try as a whole.