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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon:

Standards crucial to T&T's competitiveness

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR-ALONZO
131 days ago
20241016
Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon, centre, and Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) chairman Lawford Dupres, left, present a certificate of appreciation to Professor Clement Imbert during the TTBS’s World Standards Day and 50th Anniversary Event at its auditorium on the Trincity Industrial Estate in Macoya on Monday.

Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon, centre, and Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) chairman Lawford Dupres, left, present a certificate of appreciation to Professor Clement Imbert during the TTBS’s World Standards Day and 50th Anniversary Event at its auditorium on the Trincity Industrial Estate in Macoya on Monday.

ANISTO ALVES

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

T&T can po­si­tion it­self with­in the glob­al dig­i­tal ecosys­tem, har­ness the pow­er of AI and fo­cus on high val­ue in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) ser­vices.

This from Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, while speak­ing at the World Stan­dards Day stake­hold­er ap­pre­ci­a­tion and net­work­ing event which took place on Mon­day evening at Ma­coya, Tu­na­puna.

Not­ing that the role of stan­dards is now more crit­i­cal than ever, Gopee-Scoon added, "It is the foun­da­tion up­on which we build safe­ty, qual­i­ty, and trust across in­dus­tries. De­spite their im­por­tance, stan­dards are in­vis­i­ble and of­ten over­looked."

She cit­ed that over 22,000 stan­dards by the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Stan­dards (ISO) have been pub­lished world-wide, cov­er­ing al­most every as­pect of in­dus­try and hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty. She not­ed that these stan­dards rep­re­sent a con­cert­ed glob­al ef­fort to har­mo­nize prac­tices, en­hance qual­i­ty and en­sure safe­ty.

"For T&T, they are cru­cial in main­tain­ing our na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness in an in­creas­ing­ly in­ter­con­nect­ed glob­al econ­o­my," the min­is­ter main­tained.

Point­ing to the work of the T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS), Gopee-Scoon said the coun­try's na­tion­al stan­dards body is cen­tral to the de­vel­op­ment of stan­dards that sup­port the econ­o­my.

"By do­ing so, the bu­reau not on­ly en­hances the qual­i­ty and safe­ty of prod­ucts and ser­vices, but al­so fos­ters an en­vi­ron­ment that is con­ducive to in­no­va­tion and com­pet­i­tive­ness. This com­mit­ment to stan­dard­i­s­a­tion is cru­cial for open­ing of new mar­kets and fa­cil­i­tat­ing trade, ul­ti­mate­ly dri­ving in­no­va­tion and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth," she said.

In shar­ing glob­al sta­tis­tics, Gopee-Scoon said the World Bank es­ti­mates that the dig­i­tal econ­o­my con­tributes more than 15 per cent of glob­al gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP), and in the past decade, it has been grow­ing at two and a half times faster than phys­i­cal world GDP.

More specif­i­cal­ly, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) can po­ten­tial­ly con­tribute as much as US$13 tril­lion to the glob­al econ­o­my by 2030, ac­cord­ing to a re­port by the multi­na­tion­al strat­e­gy and man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny.

Thie theme of the 2024 World Stan­dards Day was In­dus­try, In­no­va­tion, and In­fra­struc­ture in the age of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI).

The min­is­ter added this theme res­onat­ed deeply giv­en the chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties faced in to­day’s rapid­ly chang­ing world.

This year’s cel­e­bra­tion co­in­cid­ed with the 50th an­niver­sary of the TTBS.


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