Moving Into the Future with ICT

As part of its ongoing efforts to build capacity in ICT, the Institute, in collaboration with some of its valuable partners like the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce hosted a session on Wednesday 25^th May 2016 that highlighted the need to utilize ICT in the ‘new’ economy.  This session showcased software that can be accessed by many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country.    

CARIRI recognizes ICT critical areas of deficiency at the microeconomic level such as technological readiness, business sophistication, innovation and the relative underutilization of ICT by the business sector. Because of this, an InterAmerican Development Bank project was launched with the aim of improving the performance of SMEs through the application of ICT a few years ago and thus far, with CARIRI as the executing arm of this project, was able to reach over 450 SMEs in a variety of sectors.

CARIRI understands the potential of the non-energy manufacturing and services sector which are dominant within the country and significantly contribute substantially to economic growth and development. As part of our mandate, we build technological capability and enhance operational efficiency among SMEs through secured financial support from the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF).  Some of these include Electronic Health Record software called CARIMed as well as CARIRI’s Point of Sales Software, these are just two examples of what CARIRI has been doing in the field of ICT over the last couple of years. 

At the session entitled ‘Moving into the Future with ICT’, Chief Executive Officer of CARIRI, Mr Liaquat Ali Shah said “small businesses are very important to most economies generating significant wealth and employment.  Competitiveness and innovation go hand in hand, for companies to grow and to continue to be successful, innovation is critical.  There is the ever-pressing need for relevant stakeholders to understand innovation in small businesses particularly in terms of ICT implementation and use in order to plan how to survive in today’s economic climate and to expand in the future.’

Ms Vashtie Dookiesingh, Multilateral Investment Fund Specialist at the InterAmerican Bank commended CARIRI on a job well done as the executing agent of the project. She stated that the overall objective of the project was to improve the business performance and competitiveness of businesses in the target sectors, which was expanded to include virtually all sectors in the country and that CARIRI had done an impressive job thus far by reaching out to the companies with potential for ICT implementation. 

Mr Richie Sookhai, President of the Chagaunas Chamber of Industry and Commerce also gave some remarks to the audience gathered at the Centre for Enterprise Development, Freeport.  Mr Sookhai, also a business owner also spoke about how ICT can be utilized to ensure that businesses succeed in a global environment.  He also spoke about the use of technology in the fight against crime and asked some very pertinent questions about how effective we are at using the data that is available. 

At the session, members of the audience were treated to the new software built in-house at CARIRI to satisfy the demand for more personalized software.  A very active question and answer segment took place as members of the audience, many of them small business owners, had numerous questions for the team. 

At the end of the programme, the audience was invited to sign up for a free diagnostic, in which the team would go into the business and determine what ICT tools would be able to assist the business to operate more efficiently and they would suggest implementations which normally range from social media to accounting systems to inventory management systems depending on the needs of the business.