Raphael John-Lall

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) have re­leased man­i­festos which men­tioned small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SME) and while busi­ness cham­bers across the coun­try are un­hap­py with the state of this sec­tor, they are hop­ing that whichev­er par­ty wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion, it takes the im­por­tance of SMEs in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Busi­ness lead­ers who spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian made it clear that as pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions, they do not sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty but in their analy­sis of the man­i­festos, they want to en­sure that SMEs thrive.

On Fri­day, the Min­istry of Fi­nance an­nounced that SMEs would ac­cess up to US$50,000 a month to pay in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness ex­pens­es through a fa­cil­i­ty man­aged by the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank).

The PNM’s man­i­festo al­so promised to help the SME sec­tor by sim­pli­fy­ing trade process­es and en­hanc­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness through more sub­si­dies and fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives.

The UNC, on the oth­er hand, wants small agro-pro­duc­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs to ac­cept fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives.

The UNC’s man­i­festo al­so touched on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) soft­ware and blockchain to make Cus­toms more ef­fi­cient and on­line reg­is­ter­ing of busi­ness­es.

Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Ri­car­do Mo­hammed told the Busi­ness Guardian in a state­ment that the last 10 years have been dif­fi­cult for SMEs, adding that the gov­ern­ment has not tak­en this sec­tor se­ri­ous­ly.

“The SME sec­tor has been fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges since 2017. This has led to the birth of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), where we had all small cham­bers com­ing to­geth­er to voice our con­cerns un­der one or­gan­i­sa­tion that com­pris­es the pres­i­dents of each small cham­ber. In the past, no small cham­ber was ac­knowl­edged by Gov­ern­ment or was tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

“The gov­ern­ment was on­ly con­cerned about what the larg­er cham­bers had to say which in many cas­es did not rep­re­sent what was tru­ly hap­pen­ing through­out T&T in the SME sec­tor,” he said.

He added the CR­BC had al­so en­gaged Gov­ern­ment on many oc­ca­sions re­gard­ing fi­nance, forex, the bank­ing sec­tor, the ease of do­ing busi­ness, cus­toms, port is­sues, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and crime to name a few.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed said noth­ing fruit­ful came out of such meet­ings.

He fur­ther not­ed that giv­en it was the lead-up to the gen­er­al elec­tion, promis­es and of­fers were be­ing made from all sides.

“The re­al­i­ty is that those items on the man­i­festos are things that have been dis­cussed and noth­ing done. So, do we re­al­ly ex­pect these promis­es to come to re­al­i­ty? The an­swer is no,” Mo­hammed said.

The UNC’s man­i­festo has al­so promised to de­vel­op the cannabis in­dus­try and give op­por­tu­ni­ties to small agro-pro­duc­ers.

On this plan, Mo­hammed said there was po­ten­tial to de­vel­op the small play­ers.

“In one man­i­festo, there is the sug­ges­tion to en­gage in med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na and the cannabis in­dus­try. This can be seen as a wel­comed ap­proach to di­ver­si­fy­ing the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. I be­lieve that con­sul­ta­tion should take place be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Phar­ma­cy Board of T&T to en­sure this ini­tia­tive is reg­u­lat­ed ef­fi­cient­ly,” he ad­vised.

Again urg­ing the next gov­ern­ment to take small busi­ness­es se­ri­ous­ly as thou­sands of jobs de­pend on this sec­tor Mo­hammed added, “The SME sec­tor is dy­ing a slow ag­o­nis­ing death. Take a dri­ve to the malls and see how many busi­ness­es have closed down. While the mid­dle class con­tin­ues to dwin­dle and the rich get rich­er and the poor get poor­er. This coun­try needs a fresh new over­all with strate­gic think­ing, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, re­duced cor­rup­tion and crime in or­der for us to sur­vive or else cra­paud smoke we pipe.”

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Daphne Bartlett al­so echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, stat­ing that SMEs have suf­fered.

She be­lieved the PNM’s man­i­festo has not of­fered any­thing new.

“The SME’s had sev­er­al meet­ings with var­i­ous min­is­ters beg­ging for as­sis­tance to stay alive. Most of our mem­bers were able to stay alive by buy­ing forex on the black mar­ket and or us­ing sev­er­al cred­it cards. When we were able to im­port the goods, we did not have buy­ers since un­em­ploy­ment is at an all-time low since the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery,” she said.

How­ev­er, she felt the Op­po­si­tion pre­sent­ed a man­i­festo pro­fess­ing to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

Bartlett al­so re­ferred to po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties in the cannabis in­dus­try for small busi­ness­es and farm­ers.

“The cannabis in­dus­try is huge and the world is mov­ing ahead in that di­rec­tion. His­to­ry would show that mar­i­jua­na was sold in par­lours to sug­ar cane work­ers as a means of re­lax­ing af­ter a hard day’s work. Then came WIT­CO (West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd) with the in­tro­duc­tion of cig­a­rettes and killed that small in­dus­try,” she added.

Dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es

Pres­i­dent of the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce, Emer­son Ched­die said while both the PNM and UNC man­i­festos em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of sup­port­ing SMEs, their ap­proach­es slight­ly dif­fered.

He not­ed the PNM man­i­festo out­lined aims to strength­en the SME ecosys­tem through fund­ing, dig­i­tal tools and stream­line trade process­es.

The aim is to boost in­no­va­tion, job cre­ation and for­eign ex­change earn­ings by ex­pand­ing ex­port ca­pac­i­ty which aligns with their broad­er vi­sion of cre­at­ing a dy­nam­ic and in­clu­sive econ­o­my.

The UNC man­i­festo, on the oth­er hand, Ched­die said, fo­cused on cre­at­ing sus­tain­able jobs and dri­ving en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

It al­so em­pha­sised em­pow­er­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es and in­vest­ing in key in­dus­tries to stim­u­late growth.

“Both par­ties seem to recog­nise the crit­i­cal role SMEs play in eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, they could go fur­ther by ex­pand­ing ac­cess to fund­ing through di­ver­si­fied fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments, such as grants for in­no­va­tion, ex­port ex­pan­sion, and tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion.

“Ca­pac­i­ty build­ing through strength­en­ing lead­er­ship, de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and busi­ness re­la­tion­ships to en­hance long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty. En­cour­age­ment of SMEs to adopt en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly prac­tices and in­vest in green in­no­va­tion and strate­gic part­ner­ships through fa­cil­i­tat­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions be­tween SMEs and larg­er cor­po­ra­tions to dri­ve growth and com­pet­i­tive­ness,” Ched­die sug­gest­ed.

He added SMEs could be fur­ther as­sist­ed by be­ing pro­vid­ed with help with se­cure pay­ment so­lu­tions which are es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing safe and seam­less trans­ac­tions.

Work­shops, Ched­die ad­vised, should be of­fered to ob­tain the know-how on pay­ment gate­ways through plat­forms like Wi­Pay and First At­lantic Com­merce (FAC) which would al­low busi­ness­es to ac­cept pay­ments on­line via cred­it cards, bank trans­fers, and even cash vouch­ers.

Pres­i­dent of the Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber of Com­merce, Samuel George fur­ther not­ed that af­ter ex­am­in­ing both man­i­festos he be­lieved the UNC was more at­trac­tive.

“Their man­i­festo promised greater tax re­lief and in­cen­tives for growth. In ad­di­tion, the UNC man­i­festo will ad­dress mat­ters re­lat­ing to the ease of do­ing busi­ness, which is a World Bank-in­vent­ed ma­trix. The el­e­ments of the ease of do­ing busi­ness are: start­ing a busi­ness, deal­ing with con­struc­tion per­mits, get­ting elec­tric­i­ty, reg­is­ter­ing prop­er­ty, get­ting cred­it, pro­tect­ing in­vestors, pay­ing tax­es, trad­ing across bor­ders, en­forc­ing con­tracts and re­solv­ing in­sol­ven­cy,” George stat­ed.

He al­so not­ed that T&T has a mixed eco­nom­ic sys­tem in which there is “pri­vate free­dom com­bined with cen­tralised eco­nom­ic plan­ning and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion,” how­ev­er, over the past 10 years, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has seen an econ­o­my that has been more gov­ern­ment-con­trolled and there­fore, a re­duc­tion of the eco­nom­ic space of the pri­vate sec­tor.

“Re­gard­ing fi­nance, forex, the bank­ing sec­tor, the ease of do­ing busi­ness, cus­toms, port is­sues, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and crime to name a few, the PNM man­i­festo did not ad­dress these is­sues. Even mat­ters of high bank in­ter­est rates and the op­pres­sive ser­vice charges were not even an item with­in the PNM man­i­festo,” he added.