An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon says work on an e-com­merce strat­e­gy 2024 -2029 will com­mence next month and is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Au­gust 2024.

Gopee-Scoon made the com­ment dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate.

She not­ed that the e-com­merce strat­e­gy will be based on the out­come of an e-trade readi­ness as­sess­ment, which will analyse the e-com­merce ecosys­tem to cre­ate a strat­e­gy that is well suit­ed to T&T.

Fur­ther, the min­is­ter said the strat­e­gy will fo­cus main­ly on sup­port­ing the use of e-com­merce by lo­cal busi­ness­es to ser­vice do­mes­tic, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Gopee-Scoon men­tioned that the strat­e­gy will con­tribute to ef­forts by the Gov­ern­ment to use tech­nol­o­gy to ac­cel­er­ate change and de­vel­op­ment through eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, job cre­ation and in­creased trade.

Im­ple­men­ta­tion of a

Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem

The min­is­ter told the Sen­ate that to as­sist with the back­logs at T&T’s ports, in June the min­istry signed a US$9.8 mil­lion con­tract with SO­GET, a glob­al leader in the de­vel­op­ment of Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tems, for the im­ple­men­ta­tion, main­te­nance and sup­port of a Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem for this coun­try.

She said im­ple­men­ta­tion will con­tin­ue for two years with five mod­ules ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed with­in the first six months.

Some of the fea­tures of the Sys­tem will in­clude:

• Pro­vi­sion of re­al-time ex­change of da­ta and stream­lined and im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy of im­port, ex­port, mar­itime and road trans­port-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties;

• Track­ing and man­ag­ing of ves­sel ar­rivals and de­par­tures;

• Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween ves­sels, port au­thor­i­ties, reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and Cus­toms;

• Con­trol and record­ing of en­try and ex­it of trucks and con­tain­ers to the port; trace­abil­i­ty of trans­ac­tions and im­proved trans­paren­cy in the goods clear­ance process.

Au­to­mat­ed con­struc­tion

per­mit sys­tem

On the De­vel­opTT plat­form, which was launched in March 2020, the min­is­ter said by this De­cem­ber, the min­istry will im­ple­ment elec­tron­ic pay­ments for ser­vices on the plat­form and in 2024 will launch the fol­low­ing:

• The car rental e-ser­vice (de­vel­op­ment of this e-ser­vice was com­plet­ed in fis­cal 2023)—for the use of land/site as a small car rental fa­cil­i­ty;

• Vari­a­tion e-ser­vice—for mi­nor vari­a­tions to the land use pol­i­cy or site de­vel­op­ment stan­dards;

• Min­ing e-ser­vice—for plan­ning per­mis­sion for min­ing and pro­cess­ing ac­tiv­i­ties;

• Ad­ver­tise­ment e-ser­vice—for per­mis­sion to dis­play ad­ver­tise­ments.

Link­ages

Al­so, she said the re­ports on strength­en­ing sec­toral link­ages and re­gion­al val­ue chains for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor have been re­ceived and are be­ing re­viewed by the min­istry.

Gopee-Scoon re­vealed that dis­cus­sions are be­ing held with the con­sul­tants to fi­nalise the sub­mis­sions.

The Study on Sec­toral Link­ages, the min­is­ter said, is aimed at de­vel­op­ing lo­cal val­ue chains by iden­ti­fy­ing and ex­ploit­ing for­ward and back­ward link­ages with­in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

“The lo­cal val­ue chains iden­ti­fied re­lat­ed to poul­try, fish, co­coa, film, fash­ion, mu­sic, food proces­sors, fresh pro­duce and events/fes­ti­vals.”

The Study on Re­gion­al Val­ue Chains, Gopee-Scoon ex­plained, aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing new and al­ter­nate sup­pli­ers of in­puts in Cari­com for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“Prod­ucts rec­om­mend­ed for the de­vel­op­ment of re­gion­al val­ue chains in­clude poul­try, co­coa, and juices. In fis­cal 2024, the MTI will take a tar­get­ed ap­proach to val­ue chain de­vel­op­ment aimed at in­creas­ing ef­fi­cien­cies and de­vel­op­ing val­ue-added prod­ucts and ser­vices in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor—work­ing in tan­dem with par­tic­u­lar/per­ti­nent min­istries,” she high­light­ed.