An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Re-elect­ed Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T Pres­i­dent Stu­art Fran­co is once again re­it­er­at­ing his po­si­tion that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is will­ing to as­sist the gov­ern­ment in fight­ing crime, which he said has been out of con­trol for some time now. 

Speak­ing at Am­cham T&T’s 31st an­nu­al meet­ing at the Hilton Trinidad ho­tel yes­ter­day, Fran­co said, “When mur­ders are be­ing com­mit­ted in twos, threes, fours, in hos­pi­tals,in hous­ing de­vel­op­ments, and on our road­ways, crime is out of con­trol. At the risk of be­ing ob­vi­ous, that is a huge prob­lem.”  

“I want to re­peat, and I sus­pect I speak for most if not all of you when I say – again – that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is will­ing to as­sist. We want to as­sist. All we have to do is be en­gaged and told what the broad plan is and how our help will fit in­to this plan.” 

He al­so called on lead­ers to put aside their dif­fer­ences, since fight­ing crime is not on­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment. “If crime can be solved by the State alone, then great. To date, we have not seen ev­i­dence that this is pos­si­ble,” Fran­co said. “It is time that we put aside our dif­fer­ences and work to­geth­er with a com­mon goal of putting our beau­ti­ful na­tion first.” 

While Am­cham T&T has long ad­vo­cat­ed for widen­ing the tax net and sup­ports the es­tab­lish­ment of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, Fran­co said the TTRA is not strict­ly nec­es­sary to achieve this ob­jec­tive. “I said the points are tied. Am­cham T&T has al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed for the ag­gres­sive de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of white-col­lar crime.”  

“All cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es should pay their fair share of tax­es as de­ter­mined by the law,” Fran­co said. “On the flip side, the state must en­sure that cred­its and re­funds are prop­er­ly as­sessed and re­paid in a time­ly fash­ion as pre­scribed by the law.”  

Fran­co not­ed that any­one who does not pay tax­es and re­fus­es to set­tle their oblig­a­tions with BIR should be pros­e­cut­ed. How­ev­er, there should be ad­e­quate process­es and op­por­tu­ni­ties for these to be set­tled.  

“Of crit­i­cal im­por­tance, how­ev­er, is the in­tegri­ty of the tax col­lec­tion en­ti­ty. There­fore, every tax­pay­er’s in­for­ma­tion must, by law, be kept con­fi­den­tial. To do oth­er­wise is to un­der­mine trust in the sys­tem.”  

Ad­dress­ing the theme of find­ing “Op­por­tu­ni­ties In Ad­ver­si­ty,” Fran­co says tech­nol­o­gy can help with both rev­enue col­lec­tion and trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion to im­prove the is­sues at Cus­toms.  

“We know it can al­so as­sist with strength­en­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty. We still, there­fore, call for full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sys­tems that would al­low for pa­per­less clear­ance of goods, an ef­fec­tive risk man­age­ment sys­tem with trace­abil­i­ty, a trust­ed-trad­er pro­gramme, and the in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion to al­low for de min­imis val­ues to be de­ter­mined and im­ple­ment­ed.”

Al­so, the AM­CHAM T&T pres­i­dent said his or­gan­i­sa­tion will be dou­bling down on both tech­nol­o­gy as a ser­vice or tool and as an in­dus­try for fu­ture growth, which re­mains one of the coun­try’s biggest, yet large­ly un­tapped, op­por­tu­ni­ties. 

“It’s go­ing to take some time, but the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors both have to con­tin­ue to in­no­vate and lead with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in every as­pect of their op­er­a­tions.” 

Fran­co was elect­ed for a sec­ond two-year term at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing. 

The Vice pres­i­dent’s are – An­na Hen­der­son, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (Ama­ranth Busi­ness So­lu­tions) and Giselle Thomp­son-Pinard, vice pres­i­dent of cor­po­rate op­er­a­tions at bpTT. The Sec­re­tary – Kieron Bai­ley of Citibank and trea­sur­er James McLetchie, Massy Group, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer..