PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is set to be­come the chair­man of the board of the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF) next month.

Im­bert made the rev­e­la­tion while ad­dress­ing the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the LACIF Grant Agree­ment, which will see the gov­ern­ment re­ceive €3 mil­lion from CAF and the Eu­ro­pean Union for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of T&Ts in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty plat­form, e-iden­ti­ty pro­gramme and gov­ern­ment da­ta plat­form.

"I was re­mind­ed in a meet­ing with CAF yes­ter­day that the chair­man­ship of the board of di­rec­tors is ro­tat­ed among coun­tries, and next month, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go will be the chair­man of the board of di­rec­tors of CAF," said Im­bert, who con­firmed that T&T's Fi­nance Min­is­ter will hold the role for one year.

Min­is­ter Im­bert es­ti­mat­ed the grant will see an es­ti­mat­ed $24 mil­lion in­vest­ed to­wards cru­cial dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion projects.

"This $24 mil­lion will go a long way with re­spect to the prepa­ra­tion for these projects, these three projects. The in­ter-op­er­abil­i­ty plat­form, the E-iden­ti­ty plat­form and the gov­ern­ment da­ta sec­tor and all the in­ter op­er­abil­i­ty plat­form is, is sim­ply al­low­ing gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments to share in­for­ma­tion in a safe and se­cure man­ner. So you can gath­er in­for­ma­tion, you can share in­for­ma­tion, and it's en­crypt­ed so that peo­ple can get in­to it, hope­ful­ly you won't be a vic­tim of ran­somware at­tacks," said Im­bert, "And so with this e-iden­ti­ty pro­gramme, I don't need to ex­plain what that is. It's elec­tron­ic iden­ti­ty. So where, right now you have a dri­ver's per­mit, you have an ID card, this will be an elec­tron­ic iden­ti­ty sys­tem, and it will be re­gion­al."

The sign­ing was al­so at­tend­ed by Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Has­sel Bac­chus, and For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne who both hailed the push grant­ed to T&T by CAF and the EU.

Bac­chus said the grant would play a sig­nif­i­cant role in de­vel­op­ing and de­ploy­ing dig­i­tal so­lu­tions for T&T and the wider Caribbean, em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Browne not­ed while re­cent trade pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments have cre­at­ed a cli­mate where col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween states is be­ing chal­lenged glob­al­ly, this cer­e­mo­ny un­der­lined the im­por­tance of reaf­firm­ing part­ner­ships in such a com­plex glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.

"Some al­liances are chang­ing al­most overnight. Against that back­drop, it is al­ways im­por­tant to em­pha­sise or share prin­ci­ples and to reaf­firm part­ner­ships that con­tin­ue to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence for make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence for the peo­ple of Trinidad," said Dr Browne who said the in­vest­ment could be cru­cial to free move­ment with­in the re­gion.