T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce re­mains con­cerned about the neg­a­tive im­pact that the par­tial clo­sure of the econ­o­my is hav­ing on busi­ness­es in T&T.

The cham­ber made a state­ment Sat­ur­day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the econ­o­my will be re­opened on a phased ba­sis.

The Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that af­ter a month of be­ing closed, restau­rants and oth­er food busi­ness­es will be al­lowed to be re­open from Mon­day.

From to­mor­row, three ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies will al­so be al­lowed to restart op­er­a­tions–Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL), cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er WIT­CO, and steel pro­duc­er Nu Iron.

All oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers will be al­lowed to re­open in the sec­ond phase from May 24.

The cham­ber said while it ful­ly sup­ports a risk-based restart of the econ­o­my, the an­nounce­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter to re­open on a phased ba­sis took a very risk-averse ap­proach.

“We recog­nise that a del­i­cate bal­ance is need­ed, but we are ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed and con­cerned about the po­ten­tial im­pact on the on­go­ing vi­a­bil­i­ty of the ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness­es. The ap­proach out­lined will re­sult in in­creased un­em­ploy­ment, so­cial ten­sion, in­creased crime and fur­ther stress up­on our al­ready frag­ile econ­o­my.

The cham­ber said based on the num­ber of busi­ness­es which have been closed–some over eight weeks–the un­em­ploy­ment fig­ure is cur­rent­ly over 100,000 and could now es­ca­late.

With­out any fis­cal sup­port, many small­er busi­ness­es will prob­a­bly not sur­vive, while oth­er com­pa­nies are strug­gling to un­der­stand the long-term im­pact on their busi­ness­es and how best to re­spond, the cham­ber added.

The cham­ber crit­i­cised T&T’s Gov­ern­ment for not do­ing enough as oth­er gov­ern­ments have done across the world.

“While we have seen gov­ern­ments around the world re­spond quick­ly to pro­vide fis­cal sup­port to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the Gov­ern­ment has, up to now, ab­di­cat­ed its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress this di­rect­ly. We now call on the Gov­ern­ment to act ur­gent­ly. We be­lieve that the most vul­ner­a­ble busi­ness­es would be the mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es with an­nu­al sales of un­der $10 mil­lion which have seen sales de­cline by 25 per­cent or more over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od end­ing April this year.”

The cham­ber ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to ac­cess the re­quired mon­ey from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) to sup­port restart­ing and trans­form­ing the econ­o­my. They al­so sug­gest­ed that the Roadmap Com­mit­tee should par­tic­i­pate in the on­go­ing over­sight of the use of the funds.

TTMA DIS­AP­POINT­ED

Mean­while, Fran­ka Costel­loe, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) told CNC3 that the Gov­ern­ment has done a good job in pro­tect­ing lives, but she is “dis­ap­point­ed” that the en­tire man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try will not be al­lowed to open.

“It has been eight weeks of our busi­ness­es be­ing closed. Our cash flow is be­ing re­strict­ed at an alarm­ing rate. Ex­pens­es have stag­nat­ed, we are try­ing to main­tain em­ploy­ment. Busi­ness­es have al­ready tak­en the de­ci­sion to re­duce staff. We had hoped that we would have been able to back out to pre­serve our liveli­hood.”

She said the em­ploy­ers in the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try in­tend to restart op­er­a­tions safe­ly with san­i­tiz­ers, face masks, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and the ro­tat­ing of staff.

The en­tire man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion in­dus­tries are ready to go back to work, she said.

Am­Cham:We are com­fort­able with ap­proach

Ni­rad Tewarie, CEO, Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­Cham) told CNC3 that the coun­try is in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion but the Gov­ern­ment has act­ed de­ci­sive­ly in terms of pro­tect­ing peo­ple’s health, but those de­ci­sions have re­sult­ed in some eco­nom­ic dis­lo­ca­tion.

“We are hap­py and com­fort­able with the ap­proach be­ing used at this point. There is al­ways room for tweak­ing.”