A sig­nif­i­cant step to in­creas­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness was made on Tues­day af­ter the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try signed a con­tract for the im­ple­men­ta­tion and main­te­nance of a new Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem.

At the sign­ing on Tues­day, deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, Ran­dall Karim, ex­plained the move was ex­pect­ed to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness in the coun­try.

“This ini­tia­tive is an im­por­tant mile­stone for the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. It rep­re­sents our con­tin­ued at­tempts to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem (PCS) is an IT (In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy)-based plat­form that will seek to in­te­grate the IT sys­tems of the Port, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise di­vi­sion, and that used by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, and make all sys­tems in­ter­op­er­a­ble to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness for stake­hold­ers through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Karim.

The deal was signed with French com­pa­ny So­get, an IT ser­vice man­age­ment com­pa­ny.

Herve Cornede, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of So­get ex­plained the com­pa­ny aimed to im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness of, not on­ly the coun­try’s ports, but all lo­gis­tics hubs in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“It’s not on­ly an IT project, it’s a change man­age­ment project. So we bring all these stake­hold­ers on the same plat­form which is the Gov­ern­ment, with the board (of the Port), with Cus­toms in or­der to im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness. I think there are two goals. First of all, is to at­tract more in­vest­ments and to de­vel­op (Trinidad and To­ba­go) like the Min­is­ter of Trade has al­ways said, as the hub for busi­ness on lo­gis­tics in the Caribbean,” he said.

So­get is ex­pect­ed to in­tro­duce the PCS, a neu­tral elec­tron­ic plat­form that con­nects the bor­der clear­ance IT sys­tems used by var­i­ous stake­hold­ers. The PCS, the Min­istry ex­plained will fa­cil­i­tate the in­tel­li­gent and se­cure ex­change of in­for­ma­tion along the sup­ply chain and will al­low for au­toma­tion, man­age­ment and op­ti­miza­tion of port lo­gis­tics process­es through the sin­gle sub­mis­sion of da­ta.

The project, which based on its con­tract will cost US$9.8 mil­lion, is set to see its first im­ple­men­ta­tion steps be­gin in Sep­tem­ber.

“It is a project that will in­volve a 24-month pe­ri­od for im­ple­men­ta­tion and of course there­after with IT sys­tems main­te­nance. The PCS plat­form will have a mul­ti­tude of mod­ules in­clud­ing a road trans­port mod­ule, a port mod­ule. And so there are var­i­ous mod­ules that will be de­ployed through­out the two-year phase of im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“Of course, to­day we’ve signed the con­tract and we be­lieve that by Sep­tem­ber of this year, the ac­tu­al im­ple­men­ta­tion of the project will com­mence. We have agreed with the con­sul­tant as­so­ciate to be­gin the in­cep­tion phase of the project, be­cause both sides, of course, are ex­treme­ly ea­ger to hit the ground run­ning and de­ploy as many mod­ules in the short­est pos­si­ble pe­ri­od,” said Karim.

He ex­plained that the key com­po­nent of its ef­fi­cien­cy is the fact that the sys­tem will be utilised by all cogs of the port sys­tem from ship­ping to cus­toms.

The se­nior pu­bic ser­vant said that any IT im­ple­men­ta­tion in­volves a great deal of change man­age­ment, ex­plain­ing that this will in­volve not on­ly by pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies, but pri­vate sec­tor el­e­ments as well.

“On the pri­vate sec­tor side PCS will be used by haulers, cus­toms bro­kers and ship­ping lines, and it will in­volve a lot of reengi­neer­ing of the busi­ness process­es be­cause what we are seek­ing to do is to al­low stake­hold­ers to make one sin­gle sub­mis­sion in the var­i­ous Cus­toms doc­u­men­ta­tion and ship­ping line in­for­ma­tion man­i­fests de­c­la­ra­tions. This will mean peo­ple do not have to fight up with the var­i­ous IT sys­tems be­ing used in the gov­ern­ment when it comes to im­ports or ex­ports,” said Karim, ex­plain­ing that one sin­gle elec­tron­ic sub­mis­sion will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed through the PCS so­lu­tion to make the user ex­pe­ri­ence much more ef­fi­cient.

He said the so­lu­tion should al­so make trade and busi­ness more trans­par­ent.

“What we are at­tempt­ing to do is by fa­cil­i­tat­ing the flow of in­for­ma­tion in a much more trans­par­ent man­ner, it will al­low all of the users and op­er­a­tors to plan more ef­fi­cient­ly and man­age their busi­ness in a man­ner that will be much more sat­is­fac­to­ry to their cus­tomers and stake­hold­ers.”

Af­ter the 24-month im­ple­men­ta­tion, So­get will stay on to train of­fi­cials in the use of the sys­tem in the third year.