The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) is com­mend­ing Gov­ern­ment for its most re­cent mea­sures an­nounced to mit­i­gate the eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pact of the cur­rent COVID-19 out­break in this coun­try.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day, the T&T Cham­ber com­mend­ed the lead­er­ship tak­en with re­gard to bank­ing needs of cit­i­zens, help­ing those most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety, as well as the over­all col­lab­o­ra­tion with all eco­nom­ic stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the labour move­ment.

The T&T Cham­ber al­so points to gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to pay out­stand­ing VAT ar­rears to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as a step in the right di­rec­tion.

The full text of the T&T Cham­ber’s state­ment, fol­lows…

T&T CHAM­BER STATE­MENT ON COL­LAB­O­RA­TION AGAINST COVID-19

The T&T Cham­ber com­mends the Prime Min­is­ter and his Cab­i­net team for their strong re­sponse to the pub­lic health threat fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Post-Cab­i­net Me­dia Brief­ing on Wednes­day 18th March shows that the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach in lever­ag­ing the ex­per­tise of var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in de­vel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan to ad­dress the po­ten­tial so­cial and eco­nom­ic fall­out of COVID-19. This tru­ly shows the ben­e­fit that col­lab­o­ra­tion among gov­ern­ment, labour and busi­ness can bring to the coun­try.

We be­lieve that the ex­pan­sion­ary mon­e­tary poli­cies that have been an­nounced are need­ed at this time to al­low for liq­uid­i­ty in the sys­tem. The re­duc­tion of the re­serve re­quire­ment from 17% to 14% along with the re­duced re­po rate will in­crease the mon­ey sup­ply. We look for­ward to see­ing the im­pact that this will have on lend­ing rates.

The re­duc­tion of in­ter­est rates on cred­it cards is in­deed a step in the right di­rec­tion. While the ac­tu­al re­duc­tion will vary from bank to bank, this will in­vari­ably re­duce costs and help the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and con­sumers, as we all nav­i­gate through this cri­sis.

Our mem­bers have asked if the Gov­ern­ment can de­fer tax pay­ments due at the end of April by at least one month. We recog­nise that this could be chal­leng­ing with re­duced in­come from en­er­gy tax­es. One op­tion would be to make the de­fer­ral ap­plic­a­ble on­ly to SMEs, based ei­ther on turnover or tax at an agreed lev­el. We feel that the fi­nan­cial im­pact to the Gov­ern­ment on the to­tal tax earned should not be sig­nif­i­cant and would be a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in help­ing small­er busi­ness­es at this time. We hope that this will still be up for con­sid­er­a­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment has asked that the busi­ness sec­tor main­tain em­ploy­ment lev­els, at least for the first month ini­tial­ly. We sup­port this re­quest and rec­om­mend that em­ploy­ers make every ef­fort to re­tain their em­ploy­ees wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. It is in the best in­ter­est of all to re­tain the staff we have in­vest­ed in de­vel­op­ing over the years. We are com­fort­ed by the dis­cus­sions with many of our mem­bers who have said they will do their best to­wards mak­ing this pos­si­ble.

We are hap­py that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has made a com­mit­ment to pay out­stand­ing amounts owed to sup­pli­ers and we are hope­ful that this will al­so in­clude the long over­due VAT re­funds.

We be­lieve it is a pos­i­tive step to pro­vide im­proved for­eign ex­change ac­cess to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and crit­i­cal im­ports such as ba­sic food items and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

In times of cri­sis, sup­port mea­sures are al­ways nec­es­sary for mem­bers of so­ci­ety. Ini­tia­tives such as ‘skip-a-pay­ment’ for mort­gages and loans at the com­mer­cial banks and de­ferred HDC mort­gage pay­ments will cer­tain­ly aid in al­le­vi­at­ing some con­cerns about per­sons meet­ing fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments at this time. We are al­so in sup­port of the mea­sures that the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment is con­sid­er­ing to­wards pro­vid­ing a safe­ty net for the most vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety.

The in­creased al­lo­ca­tion for To­ba­go as well as the pro­gramme to fa­cil­i­tate the up­grade and ren­o­va­tion of ho­tels will have a pos­i­tive im­pact, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, which is cru­cial to the To­ba­go econ­o­my.

The T&T Cham­ber re­it­er­ates that we all have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for com­bat­ting the spread of this virus so that we do not ex­pe­ri­ence height­ened trans­mis­sion rates. We urge busi­ness­es and all cit­i­zens to ad­here to the rec­om­men­da­tions by pub­lic health of­fi­cials to en­sure the safe­ty of every­one.