Ryan Ba­choo

The Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and the Pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) Ilan Gold­fa­jn, signed a US$90 mil­lion Con­di­tion­al Cred­it Line for In­vest­ment Projects, which in­cludes a first in­di­vid­ual loan of US$42 mil­lion, to fa­cil­i­tate the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of T&T by sup­port­ing the ex­pan­sion and en­hance­ment of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

The sign­ing took place on March 26 at the An­nu­al Meet­ings of the Board of Gov­er­nors of the IDB and IDB In­vest, its pri­vate sec­tor arm, in Pun­ta Cana, San­to Domin­go. Min­is­ter Beck­les is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing T&T as a Gov­er­nor on the Board of Gov­er­nors of the IDB at the An­nu­al Meet­ings.

Ilan Gold­fa­jn, Pres­i­dent of the IDB em­pha­sized that: “Achiev­ing a more sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic mod­el for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment re­quires struc­tur­al trans­for­ma­tions that ad­dress the coun­try’s rel­a­tive­ly low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els. This is an area where the Bank has been ac­tive­ly as­sist­ing the coun­try through fi­nanc­ing and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance. Over the next 10 years, this Con­di­tion­al Line of Cred­it will help fa­cil­i­tate the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go by sup­port­ing a gov­ern­ment-led ex­pan­sion and en­hance­ment of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.”

Min­is­ter Beck­les high­light­ed the val­ue of the es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion in 2022 by Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, which un­der­scores Trinidad and To­ba­go's recog­ni­tion of the glob­al shift to­wards dig­i­tal­iza­tion and a com­mit­ment to em­brac­ing dig­i­tal­iza­tion to re­main com­pet­i­tive in the dig­i­tal age. She added that “We rec­og­nize the im­por­tance of dig­i­tal­iza­tion for de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try and its crit­i­cal role in pro­mot­ing re­silient pros­per­i­ty, en­hanc­ing eco­nom­ic growth, im­prov­ing ac­cess to pub­lic ser­vices, and fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship so we wel­come this en­gage­ment with the IDB.”

Rec­og­niz­ing the chal­lenges in mak­ing the shift, the Min­is­ter rec­og­nized the IDB as a cru­cial part­ner in un­der­stand­ing these chal­lenges, en­gag­ing stake­hold­ers, and de­vel­op­ing roadmaps for in­cre­men­tal ad­just­ments to fa­cil­i­tate the jour­ney to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

The project, ap­proved by the IDB Board on De­cem­ber 13, will boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through in­clu­sive and safe dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion and in­no­va­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Se­lect­ed gov­ern­ment agen­cies will re­ceive in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing sup­port to ad­vance their use of da­ta in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty plat­forms and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty man­age­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, over 150 firms will re­ceive sup­port to use dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and more than 500 pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees will have ac­cess to ad­vanced train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in dig­i­tal ser­vice de­liv­ery and project man­age­ment. The pro­gram will al­so fea­ture ac­tiv­i­ties that pro­mote the dig­i­tal in­clu­sion of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and women-led firms.