The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI) launched the En­hanced TTBi­zLink Ap­pli­ca­tion Soft­ware to ush­er in a new era of ef­fi­cien­cy and trans­paren­cy for busi­ness­es nav­i­gat­ing the in­tri­cate web of trade and busi­ness process­es.

Un­der the Strength­en­ing of the Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow for Trade and Busi­ness Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme, TTBi­zLink con­tin­ues to rev­o­lu­tionise the land­scape of trade and busi­ness fa­cil­i­ta­tion for cit­i­zens, busi­ness­es, and in­vestors, of­fi­cials said at the launch at the Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day.

In her fea­ture ad­dress at Paula Gopee-Scoon, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try stat­ed that the en­hance­ment of the plat­form marks an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the min­istry which is tes­ti­mo­ny to the gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and en­hanced ser­vice de­liv­ery.

She not­ed that the TTBi­zLink plat­form which was launched in Oc­to­ber 2009, pro­vides a cen­tralised on­line hub for ob­tain­ing trade and busi­ness-re­lat­ed reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals in T&T.

It elim­i­nates the has­sle of nav­i­gat­ing mul­ti­ple process­es across sev­er­al gov­ern­ment de­part­ments and agen­cies; pro­motes trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty; and en­sures bet­ter ser­vice de­liv­ery.

The min­is­ter added that the plat­form cur­rent­ly pro­vides ser­vices to 23 gov­ern­ment agen­cies across eight sep­a­rate min­istries and, to date, has reg­is­tered 4,623 com­pa­nies, 36,914 in­di­vid­u­als and 399 ap­provers on the sys­tem.

In an­nounc­ing the TTBi­zLink plat­form’s en­hanced fea­tures Gopee-Scoon said these now in­clude:

• A mod­ernised, mo­bile re­spon­sive and user friend­ly in­ter­face;

• In­her­ent se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and a self-au­dit fa­cil­i­ty, which im­proves trans­paren­cy;

• Avail­able da­ta in re­al time, which aids in de­ci­sion-mak­ing;

• Dig­i­tal ap­provals which al­low ap­pli­cants to down­load signed and stamped ap­proval doc­u­ments;

• Doc­u­ment ver­i­fi­ca­tion via QR Code which al­lows any­one with a mo­bile phone to ver­i­fy the au­then­tic­i­ty of ap­proval doc­u­ments is­sued on TTBi­zLink;

• In­creased pro­cess­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and knowl­edge shar­ing among mul­ti­ple agen­cies;

• Im­proved in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty with oth­er gov­ern­ment sys­tems such as the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion ASY­CU­DA sys­tem and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s Bor­der Man­age­ment Sys­tem; and

• A pre-pay­ment fea­ture where users can draw down on pay­ments when sub­mit­ting ap­pli­ca­tions; and most im­por­tant­ly the abil­i­ty of users to make pay­ments on­line for per­mits and li­cences.”

She un­der­scored that any ser­vices on TTBi­zLink, which cur­rent­ly at­tract fees, can now be paid elec­tron­i­cal­ly, not­ing that many oth­er ser­vices are cur­rent­ly free to the pub­lic.

With these en­hance­ments, Gopee-Scoon af­firmed that TTBi­zLink demon­strates that even small de­vel­op­ing economies are ca­pa­ble of be­ing lead­ers in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of trans­for­ma­tive pub­lic sec­tor projects that are as in­clu­sive as they are trans­for­ma­tive.

“By lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the Gov­ern­ment has made ser­vices ac­ces­si­ble to a wider range of users. Every­one, re­gard­less of the busi­ness size or lo­ca­tion, can now ac­cess these Gov­ern­ment ser­vices with ease and con­ve­nience,” she added.

The up­grad­ed plat­form fur­ther im­proves the re­al-time com­mu­ni­ca­tion, en­sur­ing seam­less ex­change of in­for­ma­tion, no­ti­fi­ca­tions, and up­dates.

The min­is­ter said this im­proved trans­paren­cy and re­spon­sive­ness not on­ly bol­sters ef­fi­cien­cy, but al­so strength­ens the sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween busi­ness­es and the Gov­ern­ment.

Gopee-Scoon al­so ac­knowl­edged the par­tic­i­pa­tion and con­tri­bu­tions of both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers in shar­ing their knowl­edge and ex­per­tise to en­sure the en­hance­ment of the plat­form.

“Bring­ing this project to fruition has been a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort. The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try has left no stone un­turned in our pur­suit to im­prov­ing this ro­bust plat­form that rev­o­lu­tionis­es the way ser­vices are ac­cessed and de­liv­ered,” said Gopee-Scoon, adding, “We have worked close­ly with the con­sul­tant Crim­son­Log­ic (Pana­ma) Inc. and Crim­son­Log­ic (Trinidad and To­ba­go), en­gaged stake­hold­ers both pri­vate and pub­lic, and har­nessed the pow­er of cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive and user-friend­ly so­lu­tion.”