CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Gabriel Faria has called on the Gov­ern­ment to pay bil­lions of dol­lars it owes to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the up­com­ing bud­get.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day on CNC3’s the Morn­ing Brew, Faria said: “One of

the things we’ve been go­ing to bed and pray­ing for every night, is that the fi­nance min­is­ter takes ac­tion on over­due VAT re­funds.”

He con­tin­ued: “When I lis­ten to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the one thing we are hop­ing for, is that he will put that in­to place in this bud­get.”

Faria said that he is con­fi­dent that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert will do some­thing be­cause the un­paid VAT re­funds are hav­ing “a de­bil­i­tat­ing im­pact on busi­ness­es.”

Faria not­ed that it is hin­der­ing busi­ness­es as it re­lat­ed to in­vest­ment de­ci­sions, ex­ports and it is al­so “ty­ing up a lot of cash.”

“I would think that’s my num­ber one wish”, said Faria.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Faria not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is still fo­cused on gen­er­at­ing rev­enue from the econ­o­my as op­posed to cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where the pri­vate sec­tor can pro­duce in­come.

He said that the pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship mod­el needs to be em­braced to have a thriv­ing en­vi­ron­ment where the gov­ern­ment and busi­ness com­ple­ment each oth­er.

Faria added that Ja­maica is an ex­am­ple of this type of re­la­tion­ship.

Faria said that he hoped the Gov­ern­ment cre­ates an en­vi­ron­ment where busi­ness­es don’t have to wor­ry about bu­reau­crat­ic is­sues but will be able to earn for­eign ex­change.

Mean­while, Chair­man-elect Wade George, Ernst and Young Caribbean ad­mit­ted that he does not be­lieve that the prob­lem of for­eign change will be solved with­out dif­fi­cul­ty as it is a struc­tur­al prob­lem.

“I’m not sure that that prob­lem will be solved that eas­i­ly un­less we look at the un­der­ly­ing caus­es, which would be the short­age of for­eign cur­ren­cy in the sys­tem as a re­sult of the con­trac­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor,” said George.

He added that the forex sit­u­a­tion will con­tin­ue to con­strain un­less there is a struc­tur­al change. In the past, George said the gov­ern­ment had in­ter­vened in the econ­o­my, in places where it did not fit.

George added that now, “be­cause rev­enues are shrink­ing, there’s a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for the gov­ern­ment to di­vest state as­sets.”

George not­ed that if it is done through a com­pet­i­tive and trans­par­ent process, it would gen­er­ate rev­enue for the gov­ern­ment. He said that it would al­so al­low for the pri­vate sec­tor to cre­ate new ser­vices for T&T and in turn bring ad­di­tion­al jobs and rev­enue to the coun­try.

He said that this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty in T&T that, neigh­bour­ing states do not have.