In­vesTT pres­i­dent Sek­ou Al­leyne says the em­ploy­ment of lo­cals by Busi­ness Process Out­sourc­ing (BPO) op­er­a­tors could grow by sev­en or eight times, giv­en the ad­van­tages that T&T of­fers the call cen­tres.

In­vesTT is the in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion arm of the T&T Gov­ern­ment, and in an in­ter­view ear­ly last month at the Trinidad and To­ba­go High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don, Al­leyne said In­vesTT is look­ing to fur­ther ex­pand BPOs here.

"We see the BPO mar­ket ex­plod­ing, so we want to make sure that we build aware­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go as an un­sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket for Busi­ness Process Out­sourc­ing," said the In­vesTT pres­i­dent.

Asked to out­line the ad­van­tages that T&T of­fers to po­ten­tial BPO in­vestors, Al­leyne said in the first in­stance T&T is an un­sat­u­rat­ed coun­try.

"Places like Ja­maica that have eight or nine BPOs al­ready set up are see­ing labour costs rise and high at­tri­tion rates as em­ploy­ees can jump from BPO to BPO. Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is the same thing, ex­cept they have the added chal­lenge of Eng­lish be­ing a sec­ond lan­guage to them. They are see­ing the price of Eng­lish-speak­ing agents go up and hav­ing less ac­cess to them," said Al­leyne, adding that that ex­plains why T&T is see­ing in­ter­est from "a cou­ple" of Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic com­pa­nies.

An­oth­er ad­van­tage that T&T has is the same flight con­nec­tiv­i­ty and East­ern seaboard time-zone con­gruity as Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­publics.

He said the third ad­van­tage that T&T of­fers to po­ten­tial BPO in­vestors is telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

"We have done alot bet­ter than some of the oth­er des­ti­na­tions in the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. An ex­am­ple of that is the BPO iQor, which is al­ready well es­tab­lished in T&T. IQor was able to tran­si­tion very quick­ly to full re­mote work.

"Our fi­bre con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the last mile to the home, is very high pen­e­tra­tion, al­most 100 per cent. Not just the tele­com con­nec­tiv­i­ty, but the mid­dle-class liv­ing stan­dards, so that you don't just have wi-fi, but you have a clean, tidy and qui­et room from which you can an­swer calls for an eight-hour pe­ri­od."

Al­leyne said In­vesTT ex­pects to see more in­ter­est by BPO firms in T&T be­cause of the com­bi­na­tion of the tal­ent pool, the un­sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket–so that at­tri­tion rates are not be­ing high–the fact that iQor has been very suc­cess­ful and has ex­pand­ed to three lo­ca­tions, the tele­com con­nec­tiv­i­ty and the sup­port of T&T of­fi­cials like High Com­mis­sion­er Vish­nu Dhan­paul.

Asked about the cost of labour in T&T, Al­leyne said it is com­pa­ra­ble to Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion that are look­ing to at­tract the BPO in­vestors.

He point­ed out that when T&T first start­ed pur­su­ing BPOs eight years ago, many in­vestors did not con­sid­er T&T be­cause of its high GDP per capi­ta.

"Peo­ple au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as­sumed that our labour rates were go­ing to be very high, not un­der­stand­ing that the high GDP per capi­ta was pri­mar­i­ly based on oil and nat­ur­al gas and they do not em­ploy that many peo­ple," Al­leyne said, adding that T&T used the mon­ey from the en­er­gy sec­tor to in­vest in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, in de­vel­op­ing the tal­ent pool and in build­ing the in­fra­struc­ture.

"So, you are get­ting bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture and a bet­ter tal­ent pool at the same cost in T&T and T&T is un­sat­u­rat­ed, so you are not fight­ing with ten oth­er call cen­tres for the same per­son," said the In­vesTT pres­i­dent.

Ques­tioned on how long he thinks it is go­ing to take be­fore T&T be­come sat­u­rat­ed, Al­leyne said: "Let's put it in this per­spec­tive: Ja­maica has 2.4 mil­lion peo­ple and 50,000 BPO seats. We have 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple and we are on­ly at 2,500 seats. That's the op­por­tu­ni­ty. We may not want to get to 50,000 peo­ple em­ployed in the BPO sec­tor, but we cer­tain­ly can get to 15,000 to 20,000 peo­ple."

Asked if that means the em­ploy­ment by BPO op­er­a­tors in T&T could in­crease by sev­en or eight times, Al­leyne said: "Yes, ab­solute­ly. We have just scratched the sur­face, IQor alone want to do an­oth­er 5,000 seats. And that's them in their three lo­ca­tions."

Al­leyne said while the BPO sec­tor can and does em­ploy many peo­ple, it al­so con­ributes to the T&T econ­o­my in oth­er ways.

"It is 100 per cent for­eign ex­change earn­ings. The BPO in­vestors are not com­ing look­ing for clients in Trinidad. They have their clients in the US. They get paid by their clients in US dol­lars and they have to bring those US dol­lars in­to Trinidad to pay salaries, tele­com bills, rents etc."

Al­leyne told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in Lon­don one month ago that the agency had four more BPO op­er­a­tions in the pipeline.

One of the com­pa­nies in the pipeline, he dis­closed, was a Scot­tish com­pa­ny called As­cen­sos. In a news re­lease on March 16, In­vesTT dis­closed that As­cen­sos had se­lect­ed T&T as the ide­al nearshore lo­ca­tion to sup­port its North Amer­i­can clients.

Al­leyne and Quin­cy Flo­res, the In­vesTT man­ag­er of in­vest­ments, were in Lon­don to at­tend the March 8, Cross­Con­nect Fo­rum. The fo­rum was or­gan­ised by a plat­form from the US called Near Shore Amer­i­c­as, which pro­motes Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean as des­ti­na­tions for BPO.

"We want to make it that when in­vestors are con­sid­er­ing Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean­–they al­ways think of Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Colom­bia and Be­lize–that Trinidad and To­ba­go is on that long list. Be­ing at these shows, vir­tu­al­ly or phys­i­cal­ly, is im­por­tant to us to en­sure that we are part of the con­ver­sa­tion.