T&T has been ranked among the world's most de­sir­able glob­al ser­vice de­liv­ery lo­ca­tions in the 2016 A T Kear­ney Glob­al Ser­vices Lo­ca­tion In­dex.

For­mer­ly called the Off­shore Lo­ca­tion At­trac­tive­ness In­dex, the an­nu­al Glob­al Ser­vices Lo­ca­tion In­dex is a tool to help com­pa­nies un­der­stand and com­pare the fac­tors that make coun­tries at­trac­tive as po­ten­tial lo­ca­tions for off­shore ser­vices. It mea­sures the vi­a­bil­i­ty of coun­tries as an off­shore des­ti­na­tion based on their fi­nan­cial at­trac­tive­ness, peo­ple skills and avail­abil­i­ty, and busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

In the lat­est rank­ings, T&T is de­scribed as a rel­a­tive­ly small but eco­nom­i­cal­ly ad­vanced Caribbean coun­try of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple which "built a sol­id eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion on its pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try since gain­ing in­de­pen­dence from the Unit­ed King­dom in 1962."

The re­port con­tin­ues: "The coun­try wise­ly in­vest­ed the pro­ceeds to build a mod­ern road net­work, along with health­care, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and ed­u­ca­tion in­fra­struc­tures. Ac­cord­ing to the World Bank, the coun­try has one of the high­est gross na­tion­al in­comes per capi­ta in the world, and has been ranked by them as a "High In­come Coun­try."

It al­so cit­ed the coun­try's ed­u­ca­tion and qual­i­ty of work­force and not­ed that T&T is home to sig­nif­i­cant shared ser­vices op­er­a­tions from glob­al names like Sco­tia­bank and RBC.

This coun­try had not been on the list pre­vi­ous­ly, but A T Kear­ney, a man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm, said it went from un­ranked to 42 on their 2016 Glob­al Ser­vices Lo­ca­tion In­dex, jump­ing ahead of 13 oth­er coun­tries in the rank­ing.

"Trinidad & To­ba­go has suc­cess­ful­ly built up­on its pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices ex­per­tise de­vel­oped over decades in the pe­tro­le­um sec­tor, to turn that high­ly skilled work­force and ma­ture ed­u­ca­tion in­fra­struc­ture to­wards the broad­er ser­vices field, cre­at­ing a for­mi­da­ble tal­ent pool in fi­nan­cial ser­vices, ac­count­ing, law, and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"Add to those ad­van­tages a strong telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture, a nearshore lo­ca­tion to the Unit­ed States, and a host of tax in­cen­tives, and it be­comes easy to un­der­stand why Cana­da's Sco­tia­bank runs its Caribbean fi­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion ser­vice op­er­a­tions from Trinidad & To­ba­go," A T Kear­ney said in its re­port.

Jo­han Gott, a prin­ci­pal in A T Kear­ney's pri­vate eq­ui­ty prac­tice and co-au­thor of the re­port, along with firm part­ner and glob­al leader of the firm's strate­gic IT Prac­tice, Arun Sethi said: "Key suc­cess fac­tors for Trinidad & To­ba­go in­clude a skilled labour force, a rel­a­tive­ly strong fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try, and na­tive Eng­lish ca­pa­bil­i­ties–rare in nearshore lo­ca­tions. It is al­so a nat­ur­al place for shared ser­vices cen­tres serv­ing the lo­cal Caribbean mar­ket."

The coun­try's strong show­ing in the rank­ings has been wel­comed by Varun Ma­haraj, CEO of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC).

He said: "We are striv­ing to make T&T the gate­way to cap­i­tal mar­kets in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. Our ge­og­ra­phy and well-ed­u­cat­ed, Eng­lish-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion makes this a very achiev­able goal but we're aim­ing to fos­ter and em­pow­er lo­cal stu­dents with world-class ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties so that they can play a role in our plan."