Econ­o­mist at Re­pub­lic Bank Garvin Joe­field says Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions must be in­creased and peo­ple who evade pay­ing tax­es must be caught if T&T's has to re­gain a sound eco­nom­ic foot­ing.

He was speak­ing at a post-bud­get sem­i­nar, host­ed by the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Cham­bers held at the Cou­va Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce on Wednes­day.

"We are du­ty-bound to look af­ter the vul­ner­a­ble and this Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem is a crit­i­cal tool to do that but tenth ac­tu­ar­i­al re­view con­duct­ed in 2016 found that if noth­ing is done to im­prove con­tri­bu­tions of the NIS then the as­sets of the NIB will be de­plet­ed by 2036," Joe­field said.

He not­ed that sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions were made in the ac­tu­ar­i­al re­view which in­clud­ed rais­ing the re­tire­ment age, in­creas­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the Fund and freez­ing old age pen­sion un­til it av­er­aged 80 per cent of the min­i­mum wage.

While tax re­form is be­fore Par­lia­ment, Joe­field said the gov­ern­ment must crack­down on tax eva­sion.

"It is not a sus­tain­able po­si­tion to in­creas­es tax­es on com­pli­ant. Many op­por­tu­ni­ties are there to catch those falling in­to the cracks for decades. We have to con­tin­ue the ground­work.," he added.

For­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Brown al­so agreed that changes have to be made in tax col­lec­tion. He said that the For­eign Ex­change short­fall must al­so be ad­dressed.

"We can do so by im­port­ing less and ex­port­ing more," he added. Brown al­so said that the 15 per cent in­crease to dai­ly paid pub­lic ser­vants will cre­ate chaos in the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate as all trade unions will now want noth­ing less than 15 per cent.

"The teach­ers will be hop­ing to get noth­ing less than 16 per cent," he added.

He not­ed that while the plas­tics and sty­ro­foam ban was com­mend­able, the gov­ern­ment need­ed to ad­dress garbage dis­pos­al which costs be­tween $500 mil­lion and $1 bil­lion.

He not­ed that there must be ef­fec­tive pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery as well as a fo­cus on pro­tect­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal re­sources.

Mean­while, for­mer Trade Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie said some of the mea­sures out­lined in the Bud­get such as the 10 per cent in­crease for On-the-Job Trainees and an ex­pan­sion of the pro­gramme to in­clude 8,000 par­tic­i­pants were good but he said the gov­ern­ment failed to ad­dress the in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal mi­gra­tion oc­cur­ring in T&T.

He not­ed that sup­port must be pro­vid­ed for Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es adding that the Bud­get al­so failed to in­clude the uti­liza­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and pro­mo­tion of a dig­i­tal­ized, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven so­ci­ety.