The Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Por­tal was of­fi­cial­ly launched yes­ter­day.

The ini­tia­tive, which was cham­pi­oned by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries, along with the Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Sur­vey (NS­ES) 2022, is be­ing viewed as a cru­cial tool in the de­vel­op­ment of ser­vices sec­tor in the coun­try.

“To­geth­er these two ini­tia­tives will con­tribute great­ly to the over­all de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor by al­le­vi­at­ing some of our chal­lenges as it re­lates to the col­lec­tion of da­ta in ser­vices, en­hanc­ing our abil­i­ty to make da­ta dri­ven pol­i­cy de­ci­sions, in­creas­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness and guar­an­tee­ing a more re­silient and sus­tain­able in­dus­try,” said Min­is­ter of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon at the launch of the por­tal at the Trinidad Hilton on Tues­day.

Gopee-Scoon said, “The Com­ple­tion of the Na­tion­al Ser­vices Ex­porters Sur­vey 2022 rep­re­sents the sec­ond time in a three-year pe­ri­od that the TTC­SI has been able to suc­cess­ful­ly cap­ture the per­for­mance of Ser­vices in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

TTC­SI CEO Vashti Guyadeen said the por­tal could aid Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery as it can help the sec­tor max­imise its po­ten­tial.

“The ser­vices sec­tor can play a ma­jor role in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts. The sec­tor em­ployed over 85% of the labour force in 2017 and con­tributed 58% to re­al GDP in 2018 but on­ly ac­count­ed for an es­ti­mat­ed 8% of ex­port earn­ings in 2017. The ser­vices sec­tor there­fore, has sig­nif­i­cant scope for growth in terms of ex­port gen­er­a­tion. De­vel­op­ments in In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) have made it much eas­i­er to per­form ser­vices for clients any­where in the world. How­ev­er, as the da­ta shows, T&T has not been able to max­imise ser­vice ex­ports,” said Guyadeen.

She stressed how­ev­er work would con­tin­u­ous­ly be done on the por­tal to im­prove and en­hance op­por­tu­ni­ties for the sec­tor.

“This Por­tal is not sta­t­ic, it will be con­tin­u­ous­ly up­grad­ed and fine-tuned. There is still time for firms and ser­vices providers to reg­is­ter on the Por­tal. There is still much more work to be done. In or­der for firms to re­alise the ben­e­fits, it must be­come the go to site for the var­i­ous cat­e­gories of users men­tioned be­fore. This means that we must em­bark on a ro­bust mar­ket­ing dri­ve,” said Guyadeen.