The cost of clos­ing T&T’s dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture gap has been es­ti­mat­ed at US$85 mil­lion, the In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank has stat­ed in its lat­est Caribbean Quar­ter­ly Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin.

“It is es­ti­mat­ed that clos­ing the gap would yield a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in GDP es­ti­mat­ed at 9.3 per cent, a 5.5 per cent in­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and 20,189 new jobs,” the IDB stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the IDB T&T faces a chal­leng­ing growth and de­vel­op­ment out­look de­rived from long­stand­ing struc­tur­al is­sues that have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The IDB stat­ed that these chal­lenges can be sum­marised in­to three cat­e­gories: (i) de­clin­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness and a less sup­port­ive busi­ness cli­mate, (ii) hu­man cap­i­tal con­straints that af­fect pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and (iii) in­sti­tu­tions and gov­er­nance in need of strength­en­ing.

A de­vel­op­ment gap analy­sis in­di­cates that there is room for im­prove­ment in trans­porta­tion, gov­er­nance, busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, tourism, en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, in­no­va­tion, dig­i­tal adop­tion and ed­u­ca­tion, the IDB stat­ed.

The IDB said that T&T ex­pe­ri­enced a large eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion in 2020.

“Re­al GDP de­clined by 7.4 per cent in 2020 and is ex­pect­ed to de­cline by 0.9 per cent in 2021. The on­go­ing COVID-19 shock has ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed eco­nom­ic growth through low­er gas and oil out­put and prices, and a par­tial lock­down of the do­mes­tic econ­o­my,” it stat­ed.

The IDB stat­ed that a grad­ual eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery is ex­pect­ed over the medi­um term, sup­port­ed most­ly by im­prove­ments in com­mod­i­ty prices.

“How­ev­er, pan­dem­ic head­winds in T&T’s trad­ing part­ners and a scarred do­mes­tic pri­vate sec­tor could af­fect the pace of eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery. T&T has made good progress in dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, but there is room for im­prove­ment,” it stat­ed.

A re­view of some key in­di­ca­tors re­lat­ed to dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture shows that the coun­try per­forms bet­ter than the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion on av­er­age but needs to in­vest more to reach Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) stan­dards.

“In­vest­ments should al­so fo­cus on im­prov­ing ac­cess to and the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of elec­tric­i­ty, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion, ICT, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas,” it stat­ed.