The T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) is hop­ing that there will be a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ex­ports fol­low­ing two re­cent ini­tia­tives pi­lot­ed by the group.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TTC­SI Vashti Guyadeen hailed an ex­port ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme called Gate­way to Trade as well as the de­vel­op­ment of an on­line hub meant to push ex­port of ser­vices as game chang­ers.

Guyadeen said, “These two ini­tia­tives are game chang­ers for the econ­o­my of T&T. The find­ings from the Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Sur­vey (NS­ES) 2020 en­abled us to cus­tomise an ex­port ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme called Gate­way to Trade as well as de­vel­op this coun­try’s first na­tion­al Go Glob­al TT Ser­vices. De­vel­op­ing the ser­vices sec­tor in T&T must be strate­gi­cal­ly man­aged and the mech­a­nism to do this is through ro­bust da­ta an­a­lyt­ics and this is what we have been dri­ving at the TTC­SI since Oc­to­ber 2018.”

The ser­vices sec­tor, the TTC­SI not­ed, is un­der­per­form­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice Labour Con­tin­u­ous Sam­ple Sur­vey of Pop­u­la­tion: Labour Force Bul­letin, T&T, de­spite hav­ing an ex­port mix that main­ly con­sists of pe­tro­le­um and pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts at its core, has an econ­o­my with a ser­vices sec­tor that ac­counts for more than 60 per cent of an­nu­alised GDP (as of 2020) and 70 per cent of quar­ter­ly GDP in Q3 2021. The sec­tor al­so con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to job cre­ation, con­sis­tent­ly ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 85 per­cent of the labour force.

The bul­letin stat­ed that as of 2018, the ser­vice econ­o­my in­cor­po­rates more than 90 per cent of reg­is­tered busi­ness­es in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, de­spite hav­ing such a large chunk of the work­force and sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic weight, the ser­vices sec­tor’s con­tri­bu­tion to trade mea­sured as the sum of ser­vice ex­ports and im­ports di­vid­ed by the val­ue of GDP, is sub­stan­tial­ly low.

The ser­vices trade, ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, on­ly amount­ed to 9.4 per cent of GDP in 2020.

This fig­ure rep­re­sents con­sec­u­tive years of de­cline down from 18.2 per cent in 2017.

The TTC­SI is hope­ful that the de­vel­op­ment of the Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Por­tal could rem­e­dy this down­ward trend as the group stressed the grad­ual po­si­tion­ing of the sec­tor as a ma­jor ex­port earn­er would there­fore be a sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ment for the coun­try in the com­ing years.

It was ac­knowl­edged that shift­ing the cur­rent ap­proach would re­quire ro­bust da­ta-dri­ven pol­i­cy ac­tions to push ex­port-led growth of the sec­tor, which con­tin­ues to be con­strained by the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of dis­ag­gre­gat­ed ser­vices da­ta.

The group is hop­ing the find­ings of the NS­ES 2022 will help ad­dress the da­ta short­age and pro­pel the need­ed growth of the sec­tor.

The sur­vey will be the sec­ond time in a three-year hori­zon that the TTC­SI with fund­ing from the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try has at­tempt­ed to cap­ture the per­for­mance of ser­vices in T&T.

Guyadeen said, “The pur­pose of this ex­er­cise is to en­able da­ta-dri­ven strate­gic plan­ning of the sec­tor to grow the sec­tor’s ex­port ca­pac­i­ty over the com­ing years. The sur­vey pro­gress­es the pre­lim­i­nary NS­ES con­duct­ed in 2019 to pro­vide up­dat­ed da­ta on the eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion of the sec­tor, its cur­rent ex­port ca­pac­i­ty, and ex­ist­ing bar­ri­ers to ex­port­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the sur­vey ex­tends its ob­jec­tives to cap­ture in­sights on the pan­dem­ic’s im­pact on ser­vice providers, and the ef­fec­tive­ness of Gov­ern­ment’s re­lief ini­tia­tives through­out 2020 and 2021.”

She added, “The NS­ES 2022 al­so of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pare the re­sults of the cur­rent sur­vey against the last ex­er­cise to shed fur­ther light on the trans­for­ma­tion of the ser­vices land­scape.”

The TTSCI is aim­ing to use com­par­a­tive analy­sis against the 2019 sur­vey. To achieve this the NS­ES 2022 will tar­get the sev­en pre­vi­ous­ly as­sessed sub-sec­tors: busi­ness and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, en­er­gy ser­vices, ICT ser­vices. Ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices, fash­ion ser­vices, tourism ser­vices, cre­ative ser­vices.

Guyadeen ex­plained to bet­ter align with the MTI’s Trade Pol­i­cy 2019-2023, there were three ad­di­tion­al sub-sec­tors that were iden­ti­fied by the pol­i­cy, as well as TTC­SI’s ad­vo­ca­cy ef­forts as pri­or­i­ty sec­tors for di­ver­si­fy­ing the coun­try’s ex­ports and for­eign ex­change earn­ing-ca­pac­i­ty were in­clud­ed. The added sub-sec­tors are avi­a­tion ser­vices, health and well­ness ser­vices, and com­mer­cial mar­itime/yacht­ing ser­vices.

The TTSCI said the NS­ES 2022 would po­ten­tial­ly gen­er­ate da­ta that can be used by the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to iden­ti­fy de­vel­op­ment strate­gies “that are con­gru­ent with the chang­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic land­scape. For in­stance, the sur­vey’s re­sults can be used to iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties to grow the glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness of lo­cal ser­vice providers or to fa­cil­i­tate busi­ness to busi­ness net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­di­vid­u­als, firms, and po­ten­tial in­vestors. Fur­ther­more, it can in­form risk man­age­ment strate­gies for ma­jor so­cio-eco­nom­ic shocks that may oc­cur in the fu­ture.”

The TTC­SI al­so not­ed that de­spite T&T hav­ing a wide range of ser­vice in­dus­tries, a ‘lo­cal ser­vices hub’ brand­ing strat­e­gy does not cur­rent­ly ex­ist. The Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Por­tal is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress this as its over­all ob­jec­tive is to po­si­tion, brand, mar­ket and pro­mote T&T as an in­ter­na­tion­al ser­vices hub.

The TTC­SI added, “Ac­tiv­i­ties which will sup­port its de­vel­op­ment in­clude the cre­ation of a lo­cal ser­vices clus­ter de­vel­op­ment por­tal, in­ward/out­ward trade mis­sions and proac­tive me­dia en­gage­ment. A net­work of lo­cal ser­vices firms will be es­tab­lished as this will en­able busi­ness­es to be­come glob­alised quick­ly through shared ex­per­tise and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“This net­work will act as a lo­cal ad­vis­er on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, de­vel­op mar­ket en­try strate­gies, or­gan­ise trade work­shops and pro­vide in-depth mar­ket re­ports. It will al­so fa­cil­i­tate the ex­change of ex­pe­ri­ences and knowl­edge of in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets by en­cour­ag­ing di­a­logue be­tween ser­vice com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ments and tech­nol­o­gy sup­pli­ers on the e-com­merce side.

“The high cost of ex­port­ing has been a ma­jor chal­lenge for both ex­porters and non-ex­porters in the lo­cal ser­vices sec­tor and as a re­sult, firms could use this ‘lo­cal ser­vices hub’ to en­gage in joint mar­ket­ing ef­forts such as brand­ing, mar­ket re­search, and bundling of ser­vices which would help re­duce ex­port costs.”

The TTC­SI is al­so hop­ing these two ini­tia­tives will fur­ther push the pro­mo­tion of e-com­merce prac­tices.

Ac­cord­ing to the group, “The over­all mar­ket­ing pro­mo­tion strat­e­gy will be ex­pand­ed to in­clude the de­vel­op­ment of mul­ti­ple in­te­grat­ed sales chan­nels. Spe­cial em­pha­sis will be placed on the use of new dig­i­tal me­dia such as so­cial me­dia, mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions and on­line ad­ver­tis­ing. A clear, con­sis­tent, and com­pelling mes­sage which dri­ves de­mand to the lo­cal ser­vices sec­tor must be de­liv­ered through all chan­nels.”

There was al­so a call for ad­di­tion­al pro­mo­tion of e-com­merce prac­tices.

The TTC­SI not­ed,”The over­all mar­ket­ing pro­mo­tion strat­e­gy will be ex­pand­ed to in­clude the de­vel­op­ment of mul­ti­ple in­te­grat­ed sales chan­nels. Spe­cial em­pha­sis will be placed on the use of new dig­i­tal me­dia such as so­cial me­dia, mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions and on­line ad­ver­tis­ing.

“A clear, con­sis­tent, and com­pelling mes­sage which dri­ves de­mand to the lo­cal ser­vices sec­tor must be de­liv­ered through all chan­nels.”