Ni­rad Tewarie, CEO, Am­Cham T&T has ar­gued that tech­nol­o­gy is the cur­ren­cy that will dri­ve the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic prospects for the fu­ture.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the launch of Am­Cham’s Tec Hub Is­lands Sum­mit (T.H.I.S.) 2022 which was held at Re­pub­lic Bank, Park Street, Port-of-Spain, Tewarie posit­ed that T&T can be­come a cen­tre of ex­cel­lence; a sig­nif­i­cant node in the glob­al tech ecosys­tem.

“We must keep in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy as we con­tin­ue to map out a plan that will help us gen­er­ate the ex­pect­ed growth and sus­tain­abil­i­ty that will be so vi­tal to our sur­vival and com­pet­i­tive­ness in this ever evolv­ing world,” Tewarie said.

In show­ing some high­lights about the event to be held in Ju­ly, Tewarie said it will fo­cus on how or­gan­i­sa­tions, pri­vate and pub­lic, have re­alised tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits from us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to solve prob­lems.

Themed “Change in Ac­tion,” Tewarie added that the event will al­so show­case suc­cess sto­ries about how tech­nol­o­gy can un­der­pin a more ful­fill­ing, prof­itable and pro­duc­tive way of life by en­gag­ing with the in­no­va­tors and dis­rup­tors who are at the fore­front of the Fourth In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion wave.

Fur­ther, Tewarie not­ed that with the sup­port of the IDB, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is cur­rent­ly fi­nal­is­ing a dig­i­tal skills gap study to iden­ti­fy the ar­eas need­ed to sup­port the growth of the lo­cal tech in­dus­try which will guide the de­vel­op­ment of train­ing pro­grammes to grow lo­cal and in­vestor firms as the tech sec­tor ex­pands in T&T.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said a pa­per is ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed to Gov­ern­ment next week on op­por­tu­ni­ties that could be de­rived from a Na­tion­al Nearshoring Strat­e­gy, start­ing with a fo­cus on IT En­abled Ser­vices, not­ing that the tech­ni­cal work was done by Am­Cham’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion com­mit­tee and sec­re­tari­at.

Col­man Clif­ford, Head of En­ter­prise and Multi­na­tion­al Sales, Dig­i­cel Busi­ness So­lu­tions al­so echoed that the event is an im­por­tant cat­a­lyst to rev­o­lu­tionise busi­ness­es and by ex­ten­sion the coun­try’s econ­o­my to make it more ag­ile and ad­vanced.

He said Dig­i­cel Busi­ness re­cent­ly sur­veyed more than 1900 com­pa­nies across the re­gion which high­light­ed that the pan­dem­ic has caused many com­pa­nies to ac­cel­er­ate their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes in search of new ways to de­liv­er val­ue, gen­er­ate rev­enue, and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

As re­lat­ed to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, Clif­ford said it showed that 78 per cent of busi­ness­es ex­pect dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to change their en­ter­prise, 89 per cent see dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as an op­por­tu­ni­ty, 61 per cent have tak­en ac­tion to­ward dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion while 36 per cent see it as a threat.

The sur­vey al­so found that 39 per cent see it as a chal­lenge while 29 per cent are con­cerned about their abil­i­ty to ex­e­cute their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme.

—Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo