Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has called on women to “de­vel­op a pos­ture of con­fi­dence and pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties to mon­e­tise what they do best to se­cure their pres­ence in the in­ter­na­tion­al trad­ing place.”

Gopee-Scoon made the state­ment on Wednes­day as she ad­dressed the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre’s (ITC) Vir­tu­al Good Trade Sum­mit pan­el dis­cus­sion ti­tled “Women and trade at the heart of the pan­dem­ic re­cov­ery” .

Gopee-Scoon said that coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly small de­vel­op­ing states must in­vest in cre­at­ing an en­abling dig­i­tal en­vi­ron­ment which will pro­vide the foun­da­tion for the cre­ation of a ful­ly dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

“The Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Elec­tron­ic Funds Trans­fer which al­low all pay­ments to Gov­ern­ment, such as tax­es and cus­tom du­ties to be made elec­tron­i­cal­ly. We are al­so purs­ing the Au­toma­tion of all gov­ern­ment ser­vices where prac­ti­ca­ble and en­hanc­ing co-op­er­a­tion be­tween stake­hold­ers to mod­ern­ize, up­grade and au­to­mate im­port pro­ce­dures to re­duce the time and cost as­so­ci­at­ed with im­port and ex­port of goods”.

She un­der­scored the im­por­tance of Gov­ern­ment fi­nan­cial sup­port and in­cen­tives to en­sure the sur­vival of ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es as well as to en­cour­age the pro­lif­er­a­tion of new busi­ness ven­tures and the de­vel­op­ment of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

Gopee-Scoon said that as Trinidad and To­ba­go re­sponds to the ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, pri­or­i­ty will con­tin­ue to be placed on cre­at­ing the fa­cil­i­ta­tive en­vi­ron­ment for e-com­merce to grow and thrive.

She said COVID-19 act­ed as an im­pe­tus to get e-com­merce mov­ing with en­tre­pre­neurs find­ing in­no­v­a­tive ways to con­duct their busi­ness on­line.