GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

With trade be­ing at the fore­front of T&T’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion agen­da, the gov­ern­ment has launched Glob­al T&T to fo­cus on op­ti­mis­ing the coun­try’s re­sources and align­ing ex­per­tise and ef­forts un­der a sin­gle, fo­cused agency, to de­liv­er more im­pact­ful re­sults for the coun­try.

Mak­ing the re­marks was Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing which in­tro­duced Glob­al T&T, which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Glob­al T&T is an amal­ga­ma­tion of In­vesTT, Cre­ativeTT and Ex­porTT which un­der one um­brel­la, was pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency (TIPA).

In out­lin­ing the ad­van­tages of the new struc­ture, Gopee-Scoon who ex­plained the new struc­ture of Glob­al T&T said it would re­move du­pli­ca­tion, strength­en co­or­di­na­tion and al­low for a more in­te­grat­ed ap­proach to how work is done and how T&T is pro­mot­ed as a des­ti­na­tion for trade and in­vest­ment.

“The agency will be bet­ter po­si­tioned to serve both lo­cal busi­ness­es seek­ing to ex­pand in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets as well as lo­cal and for­eign in­vestors look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ty in T&T. A sin­gle, co­he­sive agency means clear­er lines of ac­count­abil­i­ty, faster de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and more ef­fi­cient ser­vice de­liv­ery,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

Not­ing that T&T is faced with an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI), Gopee-Scoon said there must be trans­for­ma­tive and in­no­v­a­tive ways to at­tract these in­vest­ments.

“Forg­ing deep­er ties with emerg­ing mar­kets and ne­go­ti­at­ing new or dif­fer­ent trade terms are im­per­a­tives in the cur­rent glob­al eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.So, too, is the need to di­ver­si­fy and dif­fer­en­ti­ate our of­fer,” she added.

Last week the min­istry launched the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones regime which would al­so help T&T to nav­i­gate the pre­vail­ing mar­ket volatil­i­ty.

Last week al­so saw the launch of an ex­pand­ed and en­hanced TTBi­zLink plat­form, mark­ing a to­tal of 53 ser­vices de­liv­ered by 25 gov­ern­ment agen­cies which are now ex­pe­dit­ed un­der the up­grad­ed TTBi­zLink.

Chair of Glob­al T&T, Fran­ka Costel­loe who al­so spoke at the me­dia con­fer­ence, re­it­er­at­ed that through this new com­pa­ny, T&T is not just re­spond­ing to glob­al shifts but is al­so ac­tive­ly shap­ing its fu­ture.

“With a strong foun­da­tion in da­ta and re­search, we will dri­ve for­ward glob­al strate­gies that help us iden­ti­fy both risks and op­por­tu­ni­ties and di­ver­si­fy and strength­en our econ­o­my.

“This mo­ment rep­re­sents a piv­otal step in T&T’s jour­ney to­wards glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness. It’s the be­gin­ning of a new chap­ter that will re­de­fine how we rep­re­sent our­selves to the world, how we com­pete on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, and how we un­lock the im­mense po­ten­tial of our peo­ple and our in­dus­tries,” she ex­plained.

Costel­loe added this in­te­grat­ed ap­proach to­geth­er brings tal­ent, ex­per­tise and re­sources to de­liv­er re­li­able in­for­ma­tion on key sec­tors and in­dus­tries, sup­port ser­vices for ex­porters and in­vestors as well as guid­ance on the reg­u­la­tions and process­es for es­tab­lish­ing a busi­ness in T&T.

“Whether you’re set­ting up for the first time or look­ing to ex­pand in­to new mar­kets, Glob­al T&T is your part­ner every step of the way. This or­gan­i­sa­tion rep­re­sents a piv­otal shift in how we ap­proach in­vest­ment and trade,” she added.

Al­so, Costel­loe not­ed this was a shift from “siloed ef­forts” to a strate­gic uni­fied ap­proach, one that is ag­ile, da­ta-dri­ven, and glob­al­ly con­nect­ed.

“We are here to dri­ve mean­ing­ful eco­nom­ic out­comes, more jobs, more in­no­va­tion, more op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es across T&T. As a board, we are deeply com­mit­ted to build­ing a foun­da­tion of good gov­er­nance ground­ed in ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and in­clu­sion,” she stat­ed.