The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI) has hailed the suc­cess of Trinidad and To­ba­go Trade and Busi­ness In­for­ma­tion Por­tal (TBIP).

Since its launch on May 25, 2022, TBIP has re­ceived wide­spread adop­tion, at­tract­ing over 350,000 vis­its not just from T&T, but al­so from over 140 coun­tries across the globe.

Busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens alike have ex­pressed their tremen­dous sat­is­fac­tion with the in­for­ma­tion and fea­tures avail­able, which are now eas­i­er to ac­cess than be­fore, the min­istry said.

The TBIP is an on­line re­source from the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, led by Paula Gopee-Scoon. It pro­vides a one-stop shop for all the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to, for ex­am­ple, start, op­er­ate, and grow your busi­ness lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly.

It of­fers de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on trade and busi­ness pro­ce­dures and re­quire­ments, mar­ket in­tel­li­gence, lo­cal busi­ness di­rec­to­ries, and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and in­cen­tives.

In a news re­lease, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try said the most pop­u­lar tools used on the por­tal in­clude the mar­ket re­search tools, the mar­ket analy­sis tool, the trade map too, the ex­port po­ten­tial map tool and the mar­ket ac­cess map tool which sup­ports the needs of ex­porters and im­porters, trade sup­port in­sti­tu­tions, trade pol­i­cy mak­ers and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions in re­search­ing and analysing tar­iffs as well as oth­er per­ti­nent mar­ket ac­cess con­di­tions.

The TBIP was de­signed to make the process eas­i­er for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es alike.

The TBIP is con­nect­ed to the TTBi­zLink e-ser­vices com­po­nent where­by users can sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions for reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals on­line 24/7. The TBIP is ac­ces­si­ble at in­fo.ttbi­zlink.gov.tt.

One of the key fea­tures of the TBIP is the trade pro­ce­dures fea­ture which pro­vides step-by-step guid­ance on how to im­port and ex­port goods in­to and from T&T, in­clud­ing con­tact in­for­ma­tion for reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies in­volved, re­quired doc­u­ments, cost, time­frames, down­load­able forms, and ex­pect­ed ap­provals. Sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed for busi­ness and in­vest­ment re­lat­ed pro­ce­dures.

The pub­lic no longer has to vis­it mul­ti­ple web­sites or con­duct in-per­son vis­its to var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion on how to ob­tain reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals.

An­oth­er ma­jor ben­e­fit is where the ser­vices are avail­able on­line, there is a link on the TBIP to take users di­rect­ly to the rel­e­vant elec­tron­ic plat­form to ap­ply.

If ser­vices are pa­per-based, the “forms search” fea­ture of the por­tal al­lows users to ob­tain the doc­u­ments need­ed to ap­ply for nec­es­sary ap­provals.