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.