Raphael John-Lall

Ca­ri­na Cock­burn, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T, is us­ing the Tamana Tech­nol­o­gy and An­i­ma­tion Pro­duc­tion fac­to­ry (TTAP) as just one ex­am­ple of T&T de­vel­op­ing a suc­cess­ful in­dus­try with­in the ser­vices sec­tor.

“This is a com­mer­cial an­i­ma­tion stu­dio, es­tab­lished at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) with sup­port from IDB Lab. The TTAP fac­to­ry lever­ages lo­cal tal­ent de­vel­oped right here in T&T through UTT’s Bach­e­lor in Fine Arts pro­gramme that of­fers spe­cial­i­sa­tion in an­i­ma­tion, mu­sic tech­nol­o­gy and game arts. The TTAP Fac­to­ry was orig­i­nal­ly set up to sup­port small an­i­ma­tion stu­dios to take ad­van­tage of a fast-grow­ing an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try, which was val­ued at US$394 bil­lion in 2022 and is pro­ject­ed to grow to US$528 Bil­lion in 2030,” she said.

Last week Mon­day, Cock­burn gave these facts dur­ing her fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries’ (TTC­SI) ‘Do­ing Busi­ness With the World Se­ries’ held at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, Port-of-Spain.

She added that the IDB is pleased to see that giv­en the mar­ket­ing of T&T’s in­vest­ment in an­i­ma­tion train­ing, as well as the work of their tech­ni­cal lead, Camille Abra­hams, the founder of Ani­me Caribe, the TTAP Fac­to­ry it­self has suc­cess­ful­ly en­tered in­to a num­ber of con­tracts for the de­liv­ery of an­i­ma­tion ser­vices to stu­dios in the Philip­pines and North Amer­i­ca.

“TTAP’s work has cre­at­ed con­tract op­por­tu­ni­ties for an­i­ma­tion grad­u­ates to en­gage in the ex­port of ser­vices, and from all in­di­ca­tions, the sec­tor is poised to fur­ther ac­cel­er­ate and grow.”

She said the IDB is work­ing with the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion to de­vel­op mech­a­nisms to sup­port the work of lo­cal soft­ware de­vel­op­ers and en­gage with dig­i­tal firms in T&T. En­abling mech­a­nisms for dig­i­tal firms in­clude en­sur­ing that:

a. Knowl­edge and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer is tak­ing place;

b. There is dig­i­tal tal­ent;

c. Dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture is in place;

d. Firms recog­nise the im­por­tance of long-term in­vest­ment in in­no­va­tion i.e. re­search and de­vel­op­ment (R&D);

e. Firms can ac­cess risk cap­i­tal

f. A dig­i­tal­ly friend­ly reg­u­la­to­ry and in­sti­tu­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment is pro­mot­ed in­clud­ing the use of in­stru­ments such as reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box­es to sup­port a safe en­vi­ron­ment for pro­to­typ­ing, test­ing, prov­ing, and demon­strat­ing so­lu­tions and ap­pli­ca­tions; and

g. And BSOs, in­cu­ba­tors, and ac­cel­er­a­tors have the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to sup­port the growth of dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­els.

She added that sup­port of this na­ture for com­pa­nies in T&T that are in­no­vat­ing is cur­rent­ly avail­able un­der the IDB Lab and the Eu­ro­pean Union-fi­nanced ‘Shap­ing the Fu­ture of In­no­va­tion’ pro­gramme. That is be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by Cariri and firms can com­pete for fi­nanc­ing un­der the pro­gramme which is now about to an­nounce its third call for ap­pli­ca­tions.

“Many of the suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants to date have cen­tered their pro­pos­als on the use of tech­nol­o­gy to dri­ve ser­vice de­liv­ery, ex­pand mar­kets and ac­cel­er­ate growth and I would en­cour­age all in­no­vat­ing ser­vice com­pa­nies to ap­ply.

“Al­so, again with sup­port from IDB Lab, tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven com­pa­nies across the re­gion can par­tic­i­pate in a spe­cialised busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tion pro­gramme de­liv­ered by DMZ, a glob­al leader in this space, through our part­ners at Tech Beach,” said Cock­burn.

She al­so said to en­sure T&T is ready to ex­pand its trade in ser­vices, pro­grammes such as Go­ing Glob­al which will work with ser­vices firms to en­sure that they are trained and ready for the mar­ket are es­sen­tial.

“So, I ap­plaud TTC­SI and its part­ners such as the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try for the work you are do­ing in this area, as well as on da­ta col­lec­tion and joint mar­ket­ing. In ad­di­tion, build­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty ex­tends be­yond skills de­vel­op­ment to fi­nal­is­ing lo­cal qual­i­ty stan­dards such as those re­lat­ed to the la­belling of goods, the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, re­frig­er­a­tion and air con­di­tion­ing, and Good Gov­er­nance of Or­gan­i­sa­tions, to name just a few.”

Lo­cal in­no­va­tion

Cock­burn al­so gave sta­tis­tics on where T&T and the rest of the Caribbean re­gion lie in the sphere of in­no­va­tion.

“One might ask where Caribbean economies fall in the Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex. Ja­maica comes in at num­ber 76 and T&T at num­ber 101. The main ser­vices ex­porters in the Caribbean are Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas, and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da with a con­tri­bu­tion of ser­vices to GDP of 20 per cent, 23 per cent, and 48 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. Of course, much of this is due to tourism.”

She gave tips on how T&T could ad­vance its ser­vices sec­tor.

“First, sup­ply chain lo­gis­tics and con­nec­tiv­i­ty could be strength­ened. Con­nec­tiv­i­ty, both phys­i­cal and via dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, re­mains im­por­tant to a coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive­ness in the ser­vices sec­tor. In terms of lo­gis­tics, while there are a num­ber of ac­tive ports serv­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing and oil and gas sec­tors, T&T’s ca­pac­i­ty and re­sources would have to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease to scale up the pro­vi­sion of trans­porta­tion and lo­gis­tics ser­vices. Ini­tia­tives such as the PPP soon to be ten­dered for the Port of Port-of-Spain will as­sist as will the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem (PCS).”

Cock­burn al­so said the PCS will pro­vide the in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty be­tween the trade and lo­gis­tics sys­tems that is cur­rent­ly the miss­ing link to close the com­mu­ni­ca­tion loop and op­ti­mise the dig­i­tal trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion ar­chi­tec­ture in T&T.

“By cen­tral­is­ing da­ta and stream­lin­ing work­flows, a PCS stim­u­lates col­lab­o­ra­tion, im­proves lo­gis­tics’ ef­fi­cien­cies, and helps re­duce the time, cost and com­plex­i­ty of port op­er­a­tions. It al­so im­proves trace­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in the sup­ply chain con­tribut­ing to the con­trol of car­go at ports of en­try.”

She con­clud­ed by say­ing that T&T still has much to of­fer the world in terms of its cre­ativ­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty for in­no­va­tion in var­i­ous fields and the ser­vices sec­tor is no dif­fer­ent.

“Rest as­sured that the IDB, and in­deed oth­er de­vel­op­ment part­ners, will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate to sup­port these ad­vances. Con­grat­u­la­tions once again to the TTC­SI ex­ec­u­tive and man­age­ment for the ex­cel­lent work that they con­tin­ue to de­liv­er to­wards build­ing the ser­vices sec­tor,” Cock­burn said.