The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AM­CHAM T&T) has sub­mit­ted its rec­om­men­da­tions for the up­com­ing 2021-2022 Na­tion­al Bud­get to the Min­istry of Fi­nance, re-stat­ing its com­mit­ment to work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions.

In an of­fi­cial re­lease, AM­CHAM T&T ex­plains that it at­tempt­ed to strike a bal­ance be­tween the need for an in­crease in Gov­ern­ment rev­enue, and crit­i­cal sup­port for both in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es dur­ing the cur­rent cri­sis pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic—in essence, a fo­cus on “re­cov­ery from the pan­dem­ic in the short term and pro­mote growth and de­vel­op­ment in the long term.”

“We al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of un­der­tak­ing struc­tur­al re­forms that would lead to an im­prove­ment in the ease of do­ing busi­ness,” AM­CHAM T&T says.

“It is im­por­tant that our coun­try’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery plan has clear ob­jec­tives re­lat­ed to the im­prove­ment of qual­i­ty of life and so­cial har­mo­ny as pre­req­ui­sites to a more at­trac­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment,” em­pha­sized the busi­ness lob­by, which rep­re­sents near­ly 300 com­pa­nies across dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

AM­CHAM T&T’s 2021-2022 Na­tion­al Bud­get Rec­om­men­da­tions can be ac­cessed at its web­site at www.am­chamtt.com/Bud­get.

Post-COVID growth

Among AM­CHAM T&T’s rec­om­men­da­tions for post-COVID growth are:

1. De­vel­op a na­tion­al re­cov­ery fund with an in­de­pen­dent Board to mo­bi­lize pri­vate cap­i­tal through the pro­vi­sion of fu­ture tax cred­its.

2. Con­sol­i­date and re-fi­nance both sov­er­eign and state en­ter­prise debt.

3. Widen the tax net by en­forc­ing the ex­ist­ing tax laws for non-com­pli­ant busi­ness­es.

4. Di­vest­ment and strate­gic in­vest­ments/ac­qui­si­tions of and by state com­pa­nies that have been op­er­at­ing as com­mer­cial en­ti­ties.

5. Amend reg­u­la­tions to al­low in­sti­tu­tion­al and pri­vate in­vestors to in­vest a por­tion of their cap­i­tal in Ven­ture Cap­i­tal and Pri­vate Eq­ui­ty funds.

6. Con­sid­er al­lo­cat­ing less than 5% of the Her­itage Fund for in­vest­ing in Pri­vate Eq­ui­ty as an In­vest­ment As­set Class, along­side the Pri­vate Sec­tor and the State.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion

Among its oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions to the Fi­nance Min­istry, AM­CHAM T&T points to the im­por­tance of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my for eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, cit­i­zen sat­is­fac­tion and sus­tain­able growth. The busi­ness lob­by is propos­ing an ac­cel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal pol­i­cy for ex­ist­ing dig­i­tal strate­gies and to sup­port greater in­no­va­tion with­in the gov­ern­ment. It says a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach is need­ed to com­plete and adopt the poli­cies around open source, re­mote work­ing, da­ta strat­e­gy, GORTT as­set man­age­ment, cloud com­put­ing, change man­age­ment, e-gov­ern­ment om­nibus tech­ni­cal stan­dards (e-GOTS) and in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty (e-GIF) and ISO/IEC 27000 se­ries.

AM­CHAM T&T al­so is rec­om­mend­ing the cre­ation and im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ICT skills de­vel­op­ment and ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­cy that en­ables glob­al ICT com­pet­i­tive­ness in se­lect sub-sec­tors; Elec­tron­ic Funds Trans­fer (EFT) meth­ods for crit­i­cal gov­ern­ment ser­vices; full ac­cep­tance of dig­i­tal and elec­tron­ic sig­na­tures; es­tab­lish­ing a da­ta in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty frame­work; de­sign­ing a com­pre­hen­sive change man­age­ment strat­e­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions plan for en­gag­ing stake­hold­er groups with­in and out­side the gov­ern­ment; a na­tion­al open da­ta pol­i­cy and im­ple­ment­ing a Na­tion­al Unique Iden­ti­fi­er and Le­gal Dig­i­tal Iden­ti­ty.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, AM­CHAM T&T is rec­om­mend­ing the pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute and its re­source re­quire­ments to at­tain bet­ter qual­i­ty da­ta sets on the na­tion­al econ­o­my and to im­prove the fre­quen­cy of the up­date/de­liv­ery of such da­ta for both Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness plan­ning.

Trade and lo­gis­tics

AM­CHAM T&T says the ex­press par­cel in­dus­try is an im­por­tant com­po­nent of T&T’s com­pet­i­tive­ness, which is why ship­ments should be processed with­in 24 or at a max­i­mum of 48 hours from the be­gin­ning of the last-mile (ar­rival in­to T&T) process to the end. AM­CHAM T&T ob­serves that with in­ter­na­tion­al trade in­creas­ing, the full ca­pac­i­ty of AS­CUY­DA sys­tem should be used by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to avoid de­lays and un­nec­es­sary back­logs that are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing do­ing busi­ness in T&T.

AM­CHAM T&T al­so is mak­ing an­oth­er call for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a de min­imus val­ue of US$400 to en­sure a much more ef­fi­cient sys­tem that would lead to in­creased col­lec­tion of much need­ed rev­enue.

En­er­gy sec­tor

On the en­er­gy front, AM­CHAM T&T rec­om­mends that Gov­ern­ment ar­tic­u­late and share a com­pre­hen­sive en­er­gy sec­tor strat­e­gy that ad­dress­es the en­tire val­ue chain for the mon­e­ti­za­tion of the na­tion’s hy­dro­car­bon re­sources and tran­si­tion to re­new­able sources of en­er­gy and fu­el.

In­clud­ed in this strat­e­gy should be the op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of a T&T High Com­mis­sion in George­town to fur­ther T&T’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests, with a fo­cus on eco­nom­ic diplo­ma­cy and trade pro­mo­tion, since Guyana is pro­ject­ed to be the fastest-grow­ing econ­o­my in the West­ern Hemi­sphere over the next decade.

Gov­ern­ment debt

Al­so, as a mea­sure of sup­port­ing in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es in T&T, AM­CHAM T&T be­lieves it is im­por­tant that the Gov­ern­ment set­tles its out­stand­ing debt to pri­vate com­pa­nies. Many com­pa­nies have grant­ed Gov­ern­ment cred­it terms for goods and ser­vices, which are past due. There­fore, in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate quick­er re­cov­ery from the pan­dem­ic, it is im­por­tant that the Gov­ern­ment ho­n­our its oblig­a­tions, as many com­pa­nies are strug­gling to ob­tain pos­i­tive cash flow dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times.