GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

De­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs is ad­vis­ing the new gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on three main is­sues to re­set the econ­o­my and achieve eco­nom­ic growth.

First­ly, she said, this must in­clude restor­ing fis­cal dis­ci­pline.

“The gov­ern­ment has to man­age its ex­pen­di­tures giv­en the de­cline in rev­enue from our main source, the en­er­gy sec­tor. So clos­ing that fis­cal gap is go­ing to be of pri­ma­ry im­por­tance,” she ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia Ltd yes­ter­day.

Com­ple­ment­ing that, Attzs said there must be an ag­gres­sive time­line and pur­pose­ful pol­i­cy to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas. “And the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties have ar­tic­u­lat­ed their plans in terms of the eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, but I would want to sug­gest this is ur­gent,” she em­pha­sised.

Third­ly, Attzs said that all of the “pain points” as­so­ci­at­ed with do­ing busi­ness—from the oner­ous, cum­ber­some bu­reau­crat­ic process­es to the forex chal­lenges—must be ad­dressed to en­cour­age pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, so the pri­vate sec­tor could com­fort­ably con­tribute to eco­nom­ic growth in the coun­try.

“Over­all, eco­nom­ic growth will not de­pend sim­ply on pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments but there must be de­ci­sive, cred­i­ble ac­tion mov­ing for­ward to re­build con­fi­dence in the coun­try and to un­lock the po­ten­tial that there is to al­low us to achieve eco­nom­ic growth from the non-en­er­gy sec­tors,” Attzs said. In look­ing at the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic growth, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon said this has been sub­op­ti­mal, re­main­ing be­low two per cent in the last three years.

He said this de­mands a re­lent­less di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion push from the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment, to­geth­er with strate­gies to boost house­hold spend­ing and pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment both by lo­cal and for­eign en­ti­ties, which is more im­por­tant giv­en the un­cer­tain geopo­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment.

“This in­volves re­mov­ing the litany of ob­sta­cles to do­ing busi­ness to make the pri­vate sec­tor more com­pet­i­tive, such as im­prov­ing port op­er­a­tions and mit­i­gat­ing cus­toms de­lays; al­low pre-ar­rival clear­ance of im­ports where busi­ness­es can up­load their trade doc­u­ments on­line be­fore the car­go reach­es the port to­geth­er with pri­ori­tis­ing trust­ed and com­pli­ant busi­ness­es for faster cus­toms clear­ance which can low­er rent and de­mur­rage charges.

“In fact, cer­tain sec­tors, such as man­u­fac­tur­ers should have a sin­gle-win­dow cus­toms process, with a guar­an­teed 24-hour clear­ance,” Ar­joon ex­plained.

He al­so not­ed that the new ad­min­is­tra­tion should al­so con­sid­er lift­ing the low-val­ue im­port du­ty thresh­old (the max­i­mum ship­ment val­ue be­low which in­com­ing goods are ex­empt from im­port du­ties) which could clear cus­toms through a sim­pli­fied, faster process. “This can low­er busi­ness costs for MSMEs, en­able e-pay­ment ser­vices for all gov­ern­ment ser­vices, tax­es and NIS; digi­tise and stream­line the ap­proval process for con­struc­tion where WASA, fire ser­vices and town and coun­try ap­provals are han­dled si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and dig­i­tal­ly; set­tle VAT re­funds at the ear­li­est while es­tab­lish­ing a statu­to­ry 60-day pay­ment win­dow,” Ar­joon sug­gest­ed.

Mean­while, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj called for in­vest­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, agri­cul­ture and ser­vices which he said is crit­i­cal to cre­ate new jobs and dri­ve sus­tain­able growth.

Crime and se­cu­ri­ty, he added, must be tack­led head-on.

“A safer en­vi­ron­ment will en­sure con­fi­dence among in­vestors and en­tre­pre­neurs. We al­so need bet­ter for­eign ex­change man­age­ment with poli­cies that en­cour­age in­vest­ment, sup­port ex­porters and make ac­cess to for­eign ex­change more pre­dictable,” Ma­haraj added.