The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) says the fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion to­ward com­bat­ing crime has been “high and ris­ing” not­ing that the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion re­mains alarm­ing.

As a re­sult, the Cham­ber is call­ing for more col­lab­o­ra­tion with pri­vate sec­tor to ef­fec­tive­ly ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion, as it re­spond­ed to Mon­day’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Re­gard­ing oth­er mea­sures, the cham­ber said it is pleased with plans to re­duce food im­port de­pen­den­cy, such as the in­tro­duc­tion of a food se­cu­ri­ty and prices com­mit­tee; the in­tro­duc­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy and cli­mate smart tech­nolo­gies to re­duce wa­ter wastage and in­crease crop yields; dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to pro­mote da­ta shar­ing and knowl­edge trans­fer; and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of arable lands to tar­get high val­ue growth sub­sec­tors.

The Cham­ber added that it was al­so heart­ened by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s promise of a forth­com­ing re­view to clear­ly de­fine the process for ac­cess­ing agri­cul­tur­al tax ex­emp­tions.

The cham­ber said it was elat­ed that VAT re­funds will be is­sued to small and medi­um busi­ness­es by De­cem­ber 31, 2024 and that in­ter­est-bear­ing bonds up to the val­ue of $3 bil­lion will al­so be is­sued by Jan­u­ary 2025.

The pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion added that it al­so sup­port­ed the holis­tic, da­ta-dri­ven tax­pay­er ap­proach, ac­cess to on­line pay­ments and user-friend­ly tax­pay­er ser­vices that the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) is ex­pect­ed to in­tro­duce.

“Our hope is that this im­ple­men­ta­tion will elim­i­nate the cur­rent ef­fi­cien­cy lim­i­ta­tions that cur­rent­ly ex­ist in pro­cess­ing both Cus­toms and Ex­cise and In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion trans­ac­tions, in­so­far as it cur­rent­ly im­pacts on the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“We view the thrust to­ward a dig­i­tal econ­o­my as a crit­i­cal node in our over­all eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. The mea­sures out­lined by the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter, through the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC), to ful­ly digi­tise key gov­ern­ment ser­vices is com­mend­able,” the Cham­ber said. It added that the is­sues of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and over­all na­tion­al safe­ty have re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion from the T&T Cham­ber, giv­en the im­pact on both the in­vest­ment cli­mate and the op­er­a­tions of the na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The Min­is­ter’s stat­ed in­ten­tion to is­sue a man­date that all in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies re­mit tax pay­ments in USD, will boost for­eign ex­change rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and as­sist in mit­i­gat­ing rev­enue short­ages dur­ing pe­ri­ods of de­pressed hy­dro­car­bon prices, said the busi­ness group.

The di­vest­ment of key as­sets ref­er­enced by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will cre­ate new em­ploy­ment and rev­enue gen­er­a­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties, it said.

“We look for­ward to the pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships be­ing pro­posed. While the over­all out­look seems pos­i­tive, the ef­fi­cient im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mea­sures to achieve the de­sired re­sults is crit­i­cal,” said the Cham­ber.