The Min­istry of Fi­nance has reached an agree­ment with CAF - De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca, to se­cure fund­ing to aid with the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the on­line tax pay­ment sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease by CAF, fund­ing will be pro­vid­ed by the De­vel­op­ment Bank to de­vel­op var­i­ous ar­eas that are very im­por­tant to the in­tro­duc­tion of on­line pay­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic sec­tor.

In the re­lease, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ad­mit­ted a very lim­it­ed num­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens con­duct trans­ac­tions on­line.

The re­lease notes that ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, on­ly 20% of the pop­u­la­tion makes on­line pur­chas­es and/or pays bills on­line, de­spite the fact that 81 % of peo­ple have a bank ac­count and 20 % have a cred­it card.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said, “Most mon­e­tary trans­ac­tions in the re­gion con­tin­ue to re­quire the fil­ing of mul­ti­ple com­plex doc­u­ments and spend­ing long hours wait­ing in line at dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment of­fices. The ex­ist­ing prac­tices have a dis­rup­tive im­pact on busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als, es­pe­cial­ly those seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion that are less averse to tech­nol­o­gy and more so­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble. Mak­ing tax pay­ment pro­ce­dures eas­i­er, as well as pro­vid­ing var­i­ous chan­nels to make pay­ments, will not on­ly im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of tax­a­tion sys­tems, but al­so great­ly con­tribute to fi­nan­cial in­clu­sive­ness and just de­vel­op­ment na­tion­al­ly and across the Caribbean.”

Gi­an­piero Leonci­ni, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of CAF in Trinidad and To­ba­go said,“We be­lieve in the po­ten­tial of Trinidad and To­ba­go to har­ness pos­si­bil­i­ties pro­vid­ed by dig­i­tal tools and so­lu­tions. Just re­cent­ly, CAF ap­proved a USD 120 mil­lion loan to boost dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the State. This project is one of the im­por­tant steps in the coun­try’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, which will en­able the pub­lic sec­tor to be more ef­fi­cient, and to act as cat­a­lyst for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and eco­nom­ic growth.”

Min­dau­gas Glo­das, CEO of NRD Com­pa­nies, a glob­al in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and con­sult­ing group of com­pa­nies spe­cialised in gov­er­nance and eco­nom­ic dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, which has been hired to aid with the project, said it was look­ing for­ward to work­ing with the gov­ern­ment on the project and point­ed to its suc­cess on sim­i­lar projects in oth­er Caribbean is­lands .

Glo­das said, “Through this con­sul­tan­cy, we‘ll sup­port the gov­ern­ment‘s ef­forts to­wards es­tab­lish­ment of a uni­fied and stan­dard­ised ap­proach to on­line pay­ments in the pub­lic sec­tor, en­sur­ing both the best user ex­pe­ri­ence and se­cu­ri­ty of pay­ments. Our com­pa­ny has been in­volved in nu­mer­ous suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment trans­for­ma­tion projects in the re­gion, in­clud­ing in Be­lize, Guyana, Grana­da, St. Lu­cia, Saint Maarten, and St Vin­cent & The Grenadines. Our glob­al ex­pe­ri­ence, and specif­i­cal­ly in the Caribbean re­gion, demon­strates that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of dig­i­tal in­no­va­tions has brought ma­jor im­prove­ments to the pro­vi­sion of gov­ern­ment ser­vices, and will have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on ar­eas such as ease of do­ing busi­ness, fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty, in­clu­sion, and over­all qual­i­ty of life.”