Shas­tri Boodan

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) said yes­ter­day it is pleased that the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to give VAT Bonds.

The CPLCC held a post-bud­get news con­fer­ence on Mon­day fol­low­ing the read­ing of the 2025 fis­cal pack­age by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Cham­ber vice pres­i­dent Amit Dass said Small and Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es should ben­e­fit from this move, adding, “We would like to see ex­act­ly how the Min­is­ter goes about it . The last time VAT bonds were is­sued, even though mul­ti­ple cham­ber mem­bers ap­plied, not all were paid. So we hope this time the al­lo­ca­tion is suf­fi­cient and the SME mar­ket gets first pref­er­ence be­fore bonds are is­sued for the large en­er­gy com­pa­nies.”

Dass said he was hope­ful that the VAT bonds is­sued to the en­er­gy com­pa­nies would be done in a non-re­fund­able for­mat where the en­er­gy com­pa­nies would not be able to use it in a man­ner to af­fect the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change to T&T.

Cham­ber head De­o­raj Ma­hase de­scribed the bud­get as a neu­tral one. He said the re­moval of du­ties on sports equip­ment would help to grow the sport tourism in­dus­try in Cou­va that is home to sev­er­al fa­cil­i­ties.

“The im­prove­ment to the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties is wel­comed. We have three ma­jor sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties in Cou­va.”

He al­so said moves to deal with crime such as the na­tion­al DNA dank were some of the is­sues raised by the Cham­ber be­fore the bud­get.

Derek Joseph, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of agri­cul­ture and non-fi­nan­cial co­op­er­a­tives said the $1.18 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to agri­cul­ture was on­ly scratch­ing the sur­face of what the in­dus­try needs. He said the Gov­ern­ment needs a more com­pre­hen­sive plan con­cern­ing food se­cu­ri­ty to tack­le sev­er­al is­sues with­in com­mu­ni­ties.