The ser­vices sec­tor ap­pears to be un­tapped as da­ta from the Cen­tral Bank showed that in 2023, ser­vices ex­ports in­creased by 30 per cent when com­pared with 2022, ac­cord­ing to the act­ing CEO of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Daren Lee Sing, as he spoke about the or­gan­i­sa­tion's jour­ney as it marked 18th an­niver­sary on Oc­to­ber 11, as the na­tion­al um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion for the sec­tor.

This marks the high­est lev­el of ser­vices ex­ports record­ed since 2014 and thus high­lights the emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the ser­vices sec­tor, grow­ing glob­al de­mand and un­der­scores its po­ten­tial to con­tribute more sub­stan­tial­ly to the na­tion’s econ­o­my, said Lee Sing.

He de­scribed the an­niver­sary not on­ly as a cel­e­bra­to­ry mile­stone, but one marked by ad­vo­ca­cy, sup­port and in­no­va­tion. He not­ed that the TTC­SI con­tin­ues to make tremen­dous strides in con­tribut­ing to this coun­try’s econ­o­my, em­ploy­ing an av­er­age of 70 per cent of T&T’s labour force with some 422,000 peo­ple.

He al­so not­ed that through the pro­vi­sion of the plat­form for net­work­ing, knowl­edge shar­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, mi­cro, small, and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) for in­stance, con­tin­ue to flour­ish.

Shar­ing in­sights on how the TTC­SI is paving the way for MSMEs Lee Sing ex­plained, “To en­sure that the MSMEs hold their space in this com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place, we fa­cil­i­tate train­ing in­ter­ven­tions in pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, gov­er­nance and op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­ter­ing glob­al mar­kets to em­pow­er the lead­er­ship of the busi­ness­es to en­hance their skill and com­pe­ten­cies in line with mar­ket de­mands and to al­low them a space in a land­scape where ser­vices must com­pete with tra­di­tion­al in­dus­tries for at­ten­tion and re­sources.

“Our de­vel­op­men­tal thrust is aimed at tak­ing the small­er busi­ness­es fur­ther up the lad­der of busi­ness suc­cess so that they can con­tribute in more di­rect ways to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, em­ploy­ment and as for­eign ex­change earn­ers.”

Turn­ing to the cre­ative in­dus­tries, Lee Sing at­test­ed they too are crit­i­cal play­ers in the ser­vices sec­tor and con­tribute to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. These in­clude mu­sic, film, vi­su­al arts, and fash­ion all of which need to be em­braced in a man­ner that will al­low them to fur­ther strength­en their ca­pac­i­ty, reach their true po­ten­tial and cor­re­spond­ing­ly add to the pro­mo­tion of tourism, for­eign ex­change earn­ings and em­ploy­ment.

Bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions in­di­cate the T&T Cre­ative In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny got $14.31 mil­lion for 2023 to 2025.

Lee Sing be­lieves that once prop­er­ly strength­ened, this sec­tor will serve as a con­trib­u­tor to a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my and thus re­duce the re­liance on tra­di­tion­al sec­tors such as oil and­nat­ur­al gas.

“In fact, in­vest­ment in cre­ative ed­u­ca­tion and in­fra­struc­ture will sup­port growth and fos­ter a skilled work­force ca­pa­ble of dri­ving in­no­va­tion. Over­all, the cre­ative in­dus­tries are not just a cul­tur­al as­set, we see them as es­sen­tial for a re­silient, dy­nam­ic ser­vices sec­tor that will con­tin­ue to pro­vide eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties and fur­ther en­hance a glob­al pres­ence,” he added.

It must recog­nised that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has height­ened the tran­si­tion to a ser­vices-dri­ven econ­o­my, Lee Sing said.

He point­ed out that the pan­dem­ic forced busi­ness­es to re-eval­u­ate their op­er­a­tional mod­els and point­ed them to dig­i­tal plat­forms for ser­vice de­liv­ery. Lee Sing not­ed that the from e-com­merce and tele­health, to on­line ed­u­ca­tion and re­mote work so­lu­tions, the pan­dem­ic catal­ysed in­no­va­tion and ac­cel­er­at­ed the adop­tion of tech­nol­o­gy across var­i­ous sec­tors.

“In T&T, this shift pre­sent­ed unique op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ser­vice providers to cap­i­talise on dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion which they have em­braced and con­tin­ue to strength­en,” he said, adding that the dig­i­tal pos­si­bil­i­ties ap­pear end­less and are ex­pand­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly.

With the pro­lif­er­a­tion of in­ter­net ac­cess and mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy, busi­ness­es are seek­ing to reach broad­er mar­kets and serve cus­tomers in in­no­v­a­tive ways, il­lus­trat­ing that in to­day’s in­ter­con­nect­ed world, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for ser­vice-based busi­ness­es are vir­tu­al­ly un­lim­it­ed, Lee Sing said.

On the way for­ward, the TTC­SI is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the ser­vices sec­tor with the aim of fur­ther strength­en­ing all as­pects of it.

Stat­ing that every busi­ness must have a ser­vice side, de­spite what prod­uct is of­fered, the TTC­SI CEO ad­vised, “We must in­ter­act with our clients and thus the ser­vice that we of­fer must be one that is con­sis­tent­ly good and above board in all re­spects. If we fail to do this, there will be chal­lenges to suc­ceed.”

Out­look for ser­vices pos­i­tive-Econ­o­mist

Re­pub­lic Bank econ­o­mist Garvin Joe­field is pre­dict­ing that the out­look for the ser­vices sec­tor is broad­ly pos­i­tive head­ing in­to 2025, notwith­stand­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges on the glob­al and do­mes­tic fronts.

He ex­plained the chal­lenges in­clude, but are not lim­it­ed to, the po­ten­tial im­pact of the wars in Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East on com­mod­i­ty prices and the on­go­ing tight­ness of the do­mes­tic for­eign ex­change mar­ket

As is the trend glob­al­ly, the ser­vices sec­tor ac­counts for the largest pro­por­tion of jobs cre­at­ed in T&T and rep­re­sents over 50 per cent of do­mes­tic GDP, Joe­field said.

Joe­field not­ed that in T&T, trade and re­pairs is the sin­gle largest ser­vice in­dus­try ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23.4 per cent of to­tal eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in 2023, ac­cord­ing to the Re­view of the Econ­o­my, 2024.

Oth­er ser­vice in­dus­tries in­clude fi­nance and in­sur­ance ser­vices, trans­port and stor­age, ac­com­mo­da­tion and food ser­vices, and in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised that giv­en the im­por­tance of the sec­tor to the econ­o­my, it is im­por­tant to take crit­i­cal ac­tion to en­hance its long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty.

“First­ly, ur­gent ac­tion is re­quired to dri­ve the de­vel­op­ment of the ser­vices in­dus­tries with the po­ten­tial/ca­pac­i­ty to earn much-need­ed for­eign ex­change.

“In this re­gard, tourism is like­ly the in­dus­try with the high­est po­ten­tial and has the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide some rel­a­tive­ly quick gains. This will help to en­hance the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of the wider ser­vices sec­tor and the econ­o­my,” Joe­field ex­plained.

He added that in some ser­vice sec­tor in­dus­tries, more fo­cus could be placed on en­sur­ing that ser­vice providers and their staff are cer­ti­fied in their re­spec­tive fields.

Fur­ther, Joe­field said a lack of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ex­pos­es do­mes­tic con­sumers to safe­ty and oth­er risks and could re­duce the op­por­tu­ni­ties for cer­tain cat­e­gories of ser­vice work­ers to ply their trade in oth­er coun­tries.

For in­stance, with the dri­ve to al­low the free move­ment of labour among Cari­com coun­tries, such work­ers could be forced to forego life-chang­ing prospects re­gion­al­ly.

He fur­ther ex­plained that in ad­di­tion to the op­por­tu­ni­ties lost by such work­ers, the coun­try would lose the po­ten­tial for­eign ex­change via re­mit­tances.

“As the coun­try seeks to en­ter new ex­port mar­kets, part­ly through the en­force­ment of min­i­mum stan­dards for man­u­fac­tured goods, it is es­sen­tial that the ser­vices sec­tor is not left be­hind,” Re­pub­lic Bank econ­o­mist main­tained.

Not­ing that the ser­vices sec­tor record­ed wide­spread, deep con­trac­tions in 2020, due to the dis­lo­ca­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Joe­field said most of the sec­tor has been on the re­cov­ery path since then, with sev­er­al in­dus­tries post­ing growth in 2022 and 2023.