Five new services come to TTBizLink platform

A total of five new services have been launched on the Trade and Industry Ministry’s TTBizLink platform under the Trade Licence Unit and Toruaim TT Ltd agencies.

As announced in February, three of these new services will allow for digital applications by operators within the scrap metal industry who previously complained about delays in obtaining export licences.

These applications include notice of intention to load scrap metal for export, permit for the shipment or alteration and permit for the shipment of broken machinery.

“These services will streamline approvals, reduce processing time and strengthen oversight ensuring that the scrap metal sector operates with integrity while contributing to sustainable trade practices,” said Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon during the launch at the ministry’s building in Port of Spain on April 8.

The tourism industry has also been included in the launch. Interim approval for a tourism project can now be applied for digitally. Entities that have been granted interim approval can apply for duty-free permits for a tourism project. This permit will allow those entities to import items free of customs duty.

“These new services will support investment and development in the tourism sector which is an important contributor to economic diversification. By digitising these processes we are removing bottlenecks and attracting investment and positioning TT as a competitive destination for tourism development.”

The introduction of these services brings the total number of e-services on the platform to 53, spanning 25 government agencies across nine ministries.

As of July 2023, TTBizLink has received over $5.2 million from 21,756 online transactions through the four ministries that conduct online payments via the platform. These ministries include Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, National Security, Health and Trade and Industry.

A significant increase in the adoption of online payments has also been recorded. A 94 per cent increase in the average revenue has been recorded along with a 56 per cent increase in the monthly average transactions.

TTBizLink operations manager, Andre Dickson said “The revenue value is much higher than the transaction increase, so this means people are more comfortable making larger payments online.”

He also identified new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that the platform plans to implement to assist approvers in enhancing the speed at which they can do their jobs.

One such enhancement will be e-goods deceleration. This will include an invoice validation service which will automatically link items to commercial invoices.

“This will allow the approvers to identify, down to the page, where in a supporting document the items are located to faster renew applications. And it will also identify where items are missing from documents meaning that they can query application resubmission much faster.”’

This is set to be launched in April 2025

Another AI feature set to come on stream is the e-work permit passport validation service.

“This will allow each of the nine application fields that appear on an application and also appear on a passport to be validated. The application will then show an icon to show that the data has been verified against the passport. This will again support faster reviews by the various agencies reviewing the work permit applications.”

A document quality validation system is also set to be implemented.

“You might realise that supporting documents are a very big component of the application process. So this feature will allow us to prevent applicants from submitting documents that are low quality and may not have enough content. This will prevent a whole class of queries that we have to send to applicants to re-submit documents and reduce processing efficiency and avoid unnecessary delay.”

Both these features are set to be implemented in May.