The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has mixed re­ac­tions to the 2019/2020 bud­get.

The Cham­ber said while it was pleased Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert took note of some of its rec­om­men­da­tions there were how­ev­er, a num­ber of re­cur­ring items from pre­vi­ous bud­gets, such as the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, which re­flect­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion chal­lenges.

“Based on the lost tax rev­enue we be­lieve the ad­min­is­tra­tion must find a way to broad­en the tax net with the cur­rent in­fra­struc­ture, if the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty is not im­ple­ment­ed in 2020,” the Cham­ber said.

It added ef­forts to al­low for more ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion by the pri­vate sec­tor in the de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­tri­al parks and the tax cred­it for mar­ket de­vel­op­ment to build the next tier of ex­porters are wel­come ini­tia­tives. “Reg­is­tered farm­ers too, will be glad for the in­cen­tives which were iden­ti­fied,” the Cham­ber added.

It said the var­i­ous hous­ing pro­grammes, once prop­er­ly ad­min­is­tered, can have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact to ac­cel­er­ate ac­cess to home own­er­ship, ben­e­fit small con­trac­tors, gen­er­ate con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, cre­ate ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ment and per­haps even have an im­pact up­on crime.

“While we are heart­ened by the Min­is­ter’s at­tempt to deal with low­er in­come earn­ers, we are con­cerned about the po­ten­tial im­pact up­on the cost of liv­ing and our com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“We how­ev­er wel­come the sev­er­al im­prove­ments to the so­cial safe­ty net which the min­is­ter out­lined for the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety,” the Cham­ber said.

It said de­ci­sions to ban Sty­ro­foam and sin­gle use plas­tics, as well phas­ing out in­can­des­cent light bulbs speak to this coun­try’s com­mit­ment to the Unit­ed Na­tions 2030 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, to which T&T is sig­na­to­ry.

“The Cham­ber is pleased the min­is­ter has com­mit­ted to re­store the VAT com­pli­ance sys­tem as orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed.

“ Our in­ter­pre­ta­tion is that from this point on, as the Act stip­u­lates, pay­ment of re­funds will be made with­in a six month pe­ri­od from the date of fil­ing, fail­ing which in­ter­est of 1 per cent per month will be ap­plied,” the Cham­ber said.

It added that while it recog­nis­es the min­is­ter’s at­tempt to deal with the is­sues of VAT re­fund it is con­cerned that the amount of the bond does not ad­dress the full ar­rears.

“While it pro­vides a trade­able in­stru­ment, we are con­cerned that the in­ter­est rate is not in keep­ing with mar­ket rates and would trans­late to a sig­nif­i­cant short­fall for busi­ness­es owed.

“ There is no clar­i­ty as to how the in­ter­est due on over­due bal­ances will be dealt with,” the Cham­ber added.

It said it was dis­ap­point­ed that no men­tion was made of the re­vo­ca­tion of the Le­gal No­tice which brought in­to force the land li­cens­ing regime in To­ba­go.

“Crime con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor de­ter­rent to busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty in T&T and we have not­ed the in­vest­ment in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“We now look for­ward to a con­comi­tant im­pact up­on the mur­der rate as we go for­ward in­to 2020,” the Cham­ber not­ed.