Some of the ma­jor bar­ri­ers that make ex­port­ing a chal­lenge in­clude dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets; fierce for­eign com­pe­ti­tion; lack of ac­cess to mar­ket in­tel­li­gence and re­search; reg­u­la­to­ry com­plex­i­ty; lack of knowl­edge of free/for­eign trade agree­ments; lack of ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, and dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing trad­ing part­ners.

These were among the find­ings of the Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Sur­vey (NS­ES) con­duct­ed by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries.

And to over­come some of these bar­ri­ers, the ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents high­light­ed that ini­tia­tives to im­prove mar­ket con­nec­tions, in­crease mar­ket re­search (and in­tel­li­gence) and im­prove ac­cess to fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance are key ne­ces­si­ties, the re­port stat­ed.

The NS­ES 2022 is the sec­ond round of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and TTC­SI’s con­tin­u­ous cap­ture of ser­vices da­ta in T&T.

The pur­pose is to en­able da­ta-dri­ven strate­gic plan­ning of the sec­tor to grow ex­port ca­pac­i­ty over the com­ing years.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTC­SI’s CEO Vashti Guyadeen the da­ta col­lect­ed is vi­tal in map­ping the way for­ward in de­vel­op­ing a holis­tic strate­gic plan for the ser­vices sec­tor for this coun­try.

She ex­plained that da­ta not on­ly tracks the per­for­mance of ser­vice providers and firms but the in­ten­tion is to use the in­for­ma­tion to en­sure the right poli­cies and in­cen­tives are in place to ac­cel­er­ate the growth of these busi­ness­es.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Guyadeen ad­vised a whole of Gov­ern­ment ap­proach is nec­es­sary to de­vel­op an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for ser­vices ex­porters to thrive.

The sec­tor em­ployed over 85 per cent of the labour force in 2017 and con­tributed 58 per cent to re­al GDP in 2018 but on­ly ac­count­ed for an es­ti­mat­ed eight per cent of ex­port earn­ings in 2017.

“The ser­vices sec­tor there­fore, has sig­nif­i­cant scope for growth in terms of ex­port gen­er­a­tion,” Guyadeen added. She not­ed the glob­al pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices mar­ket reached near­ly US$5,028.9 mil­lion in 2020, hav­ing in­creased at a com­pound an­nu­al growth rate (CA­GR) of 2.8 per cent since 2015.

The mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to grow at a CA­GR of sev­en per cent from 2020 to reach US$7,063.9 mil­lion in 2025. The glob­al pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to reach US$9,371.1 mil­lion in 2030, at a CA­GR of 5.8 per cent, Guyadeen out­lined, adding that this sec­tor in­cludes ar­chi­tects, con­tent cre­ators, ac­coun­tants and oth­er skilled pro­fes­sion­als,which T&T has a sub­stan­tial pool of tal­ent.

“Imag­ine if we con­cen­trat­ed our ef­forts on grab­bing one of the glob­al mar­ket share over the next three years,” Guyadeen added.

Ac­cord­ing to the rec­om­men­da­tions of the sur­vey the TTC­SI strong­ly sup­ports the pro­pos­al pre­sent­ed by Globe Views Strate­gies for a Ser­vices Task Force com­pris­ing key play­ers from Gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor and busi­ness sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions.

While the TTC­SI said it is pre­pared to take the lead on this thus far, there has not been a co­or­di­nat­ed and struc­ture ap­proach for man­age­ment of ser­vices ex­ports in the coun­try, it said.

“Hence the ur­gency to adopt a new strate­gic fo­cus that is led by an or­gan­i­sa­tion such as the TTC­SI that has the com­pe­ten­cy and dri­ve to im­ple­ment a col­lab­o­ra­tive and fo­cused plan,” the sur­vey re­it­er­at­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTC­SI the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tives of the task force must be to de­vel­op a five-year strate­gic plan for the Go Glob­al TT Ser­vices ini­tia­tives of the TTC­SI; pri­ori­tise sup­port for Gate­way to Trade un­til 2026; sup­port for high lev­el trade mis­sions for G2T par­tic­i­pants in iden­ti­fied pri­or­i­ty mar­kets name­ly Cari­com, North and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Africa and Eu­rope; com­ple­tion of the Na­tion­al Ser­vices Strate­gic Plan; an eval­u­a­tion and as­sess­ment of the ecosys­tem gov­ern­ing ser­vices; map­ping of the ser­vices port­fo­lio un­der­tak­en by all State agen­cies and an ac­tion plan with clear de­liv­er­ables for the next three to five years.

The sur­vey al­so iden­ti­fied var­i­ous sec­tors and their re­spec­tive pri­or­i­ties in the short to medi­um term which is be­tween three to five years.

Re­gard­ing an­i­ma­tion the sur­vey ad­vised an ac­ti­va­tion of the cul­tur­al pro­vi­sions of the EU-Car­i­fo­rum Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship agree­ment (EPA) with stronger lob­by­ing and bet­ter sup­port for film and an­i­ma­tion prac­ti­tion­ers to ac­cess the ben­e­fits of the cul­tur­al pro­vi­sions in Pro­to­col III of the EPA au­dio­vi­su­al works.

All the ex­ist­ing in­cen­tive frame­work for this sec­tor should al­so be ad­min­is­trat­ed more ef­fi­cient­ly.

“The ap­pli­ca­tion and sub­se­quent qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the cur­rent in­cen­tives of­fered takes too long to process and puts an ad­di­tion­al risk on an­i­ma­tion projects where cash flow is al­ready re­stric­tive,” the sur­vey iden­ti­fied.

Al­so, it is rec­om­mend­ed Gov­ern­ment ad­vance fund­ing to an­i­ma­tion prac­ti­tion­ers through loan guar­an­tees or in­ter­est-free loans up to the val­ue of the con­tract and al­so avail (fis­cal) in­cen­tives to in­vestors/fi­nanciers will­ing to sup­port an­i­ma­tion projects.

Busi­ness and Events Tourism

To boost this sec­tor even more, the sur­vey ad­vised an ed­u­ca­tion aware­ness cam­paign on the ben­e­fits of tourism to the econ­o­my of T&T.

“This is nec­es­sary to change the na­tion­al psy­che and mind­set of the in­dus­try,” it added.

Oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute and ro­bust da­ta an­a­lyt­ics that must be used to guide the strate­gic di­rec­tion of the in­dus­try.

Al­so, there must be more recog­ni­tion that this sub-sec­tor does not deal sole­ly with the mat­ter of ho­tels but is al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for rev­enue from meet­ings in­cen­tives con­fer­ences and ex­hi­bi­tions (MICE) and even sport tourism.

Busi­ness and Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices

For pri­or­i­ties in the short to medi­um term for this sec­tor the sur­vey said build­ing aware­ness among ser­vice providers on the process of ex­port­ing is im­por­tant as well as mar­ket in­tel­li­gence to help with mat­ters such as iden­ti­fy­ing es­ti­mates and growth rates.

There must al­so be ac­cess to fi­nance as well as dif­fi­cul­ty with the busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion process.

Trade mis­sions when ex­e­cut­ed, need to be more proac­tive and ag­gres­sive in pair­ing the needs of the lo­cal busi­ness with the struc­ture of the trade mis­sion planned, the sur­vey added.

En­er­gy Ser­vices

This is al­so crit­i­cal and to fur­ther build on this the sur­vey sug­gest­ed ac­cess to suf­fi­cient fi­nanc­ing and as­sis­tance for new com­pa­nies to kick-start their busi­ness­es.

“Ser­vice providers have dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing the right part­ners with­in the re­gion to en­gage in ex­port re­la­tions. They re­quire as­sis­tance with the build­ing of part­ner re­la­tion­ships in oth­er mar­kets and the vet­ting of the po­ten­tial part­ners,” the sur­vey ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it said there’s the need to ad­dress mar­kets where there are is­sues in achiev­ing ac­cess/part­ners/pen­e­tra­tion in­clude the Unit­ed States, Suri­name and Guyana

And ad­dress­ing bar­ri­ers to ser­vices trade which in­clude im­prov­ing the ease of mov­ing equip­ment in and out of T&T, ex­pand­ing the list of skills cer­tifi­cates un­der the Cari­com skills cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme and re­move bar­ri­er to move­ment of cap­i­tal (in­clud­ing tax is­sues) are al­so fac­tors which must al­so be ex­am­ined.

In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices

To en­hance this sec­tor in the short to medi­um term the sur­vey said chal­lenges re­gard­ing busi­ness pro­mo­tion and ex­port pro­mo­tion must be ad­dressed.

“Ser­vice providers re­quire more tan­gi­ble sup­port from em­bassies and high com­mis­sions in oth­er coun­tries and

more sup­port from State bod­ies for re­search, ad­dress­ing bar­ri­ers to en­try and eval­u­at­ing and au­dit­ing soft­ware,” the sur­vey ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it said ser­vice providers need sup­port to re­tain skilled labour at their com­pa­nies, not­ing there’s a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge in re­tain­ing skilled labour at these com­pa­nies.

Gen­er­at­ing greater aware­ness of grants and co-fi­nanc­ing that may be avail­able for ser­vice providers must al­so be pro­mot­ed.