The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor’s growth is tied to the prop­er use of tech­nol­o­gy and da­ta an­a­lyt­ics.

This was the view of Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon at the launch of the 2022 Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion on Wednes­day.

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon said, “The ac­cel­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion are piv­otal to the suc­cess of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. The con­ver­gence of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, blockchain and ro­bot­ics are fun­da­men­tal­ly shift­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and there­fore lo­cal en­ter­pris­es should be em­bed­ding these tech­nolo­gies in their op­er­a­tions to­day if they wish to re­main com­pet­i­tive.”

She added, “Da­ta an­a­lyt­ics al­lows busi­ness­es to op­ti­mise their per­for­mance and dri­ve in­no­va­tion. As we seek to re­shape our in­sti­tu­tions, an­oth­er ma­jor ini­tia­tive to strength­en and mod­ernise the coun­try’s ex­port and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion arrange­ments is the es­tab­lish­ment of a Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency. Akin to in­ter­na­tion­al mod­els, the cre­ation of one in­ter­face for ex­porters and in­vestors, both lo­cal and for­eign, will sim­pli­fy do­ing busi­ness with Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion, un­der the theme ‘Busi­ness Re­silience,’ is be­ing held phys­i­cal­ly for the first time in two years and is be­ing billed as a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty to boost this coun­try’s For­eign Di­rect in­vest­ment.

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the event, Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al was con­fi­dent it would be suc­cess­ful based on the fact all booth spaces were booked since Feb­ru­ary.

She said, “It not on­ly con­tributes to T&T’s for­eign ex­change earn­ings via pro­mot­ing ex­ports, the an­nu­al event al­so cre­ates a spin-off eco­nom­ic ef­fect. Its stag­ing en­tails the em­ploy­ment and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for many Small and Medi­um En­ter­prise (SMEs) such as cater­ers and ven­dors in the food courts; con­trac­tors who build booths; ven­dors hired to dec­o­rate booths; ac­com­mo­da­tion providers and ho­tel ser­vices; trans­porta­tion of ma­te­ri­als, hir­ing of ex­tra sup­port, tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment to man­age and run the af­fairs of ex­hibitors, and so on. In oth­er words, the eco­nom­ic mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect is sig­nif­i­cant as it runs in­to mil­lions of dol­lars.”

Coos­al hailed the in­volve­ment of the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine as he not­ed, this year To­ba­go has a big­ger pres­ence with a larg­er ex­hi­bi­tion space de­spite the show be­ing half of its orig­i­nal size with 127 booths.

180 com­pa­nies from 34 coun­tries reg­is­tered to be part of the event with 25 in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies be­ing phys­i­cal­ly present.

Fran­ka Costel­loe, Chair­man, In­vesTT al­so hailed the event as a chance to fur­ther push FDI.

She said, “Re­gard­ing for­eign in­vest­ment, which is vi­tal to the com­pet­i­tive­ness of our econ­o­my, our re­search has shown that glob­al in­vestor con­fi­dence has not waned to­tal­ly, thus pro­vid­ing us with a myr­i­ad of op­por­tu­ni­ties to cap­ture re­ju­ve­nat­ed in­ter­est in Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.”

Costel­loe said In­vesTT was ea­ger­ly look­ing to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Au­thor­i­ty “whose in­cen­tives will sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost our val­ue propo­si­tion and our abil­i­ty to at­tract new in­vestors.”