Ky­ron Reg­is

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has wel­comed the ini­tial VAT re­funds by the Gov­ern­ment and the loan de­fer­ral sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed by the banks but it con­tends more needs to be done for Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Cham­ber not­ed: “While the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives an­nounced, in­clud­ing the loan pay­ment de­fer­rals and in­ter­est re­duc­tions by the banks, are pos­i­tive mea­sures, ad­di­tion­al mech­a­nisms may be need­ed to ad­dress the MSME sec­tor.”

The Cham­ber said over the past week up to the week­end, it had been re­ceiv­ing nu­mer­ous calls from mem­bers and non-mem­bers —many from small busi­ness­es—re­gard­ing their own chal­lenges in op­er­at­ing in this un­cer­tain en­vi­ron­ment.

It said not all busi­ness­es may be in a VAT re­fund po­si­tion and as such, will not ben­e­fit from the planned VAT pay­ment and there­fore some form of as­sis­tance needs to be pro­vid­ed to oth­er small busi­ness­es.

The T&T Cham­ber said it has plead­ed for a tax de­fer­ral for cor­po­ra­tion tax, VAT, Busi­ness Levy and Green Fund Levy to as­sist the mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, as many of them do not have the cap­i­tal base to weath­er this storm and there­fore need ad­di­tion­al sup­port if they are go­ing to be around in one, two or three months.

While the Cham­ber said it con­tin­ues to be en­cour­aged by the Gov­ern­ment’s strong lead­er­ship in ad­dress­ing the cur­rent chal­lenges aris­ing from COVID-19, it ex­pressed con­cern that an eco­nom­ic slow down was be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced across many sec­tors.

The Cham­ber said Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the present cri­sis is go­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

“The em­pha­sis on re­lief for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es is well placed and shows the sen­si­tiv­i­ty in de­ci­sion-mak­ing that is re­quired at this time.

“It is im­por­tant to recog­nise that there will be life af­ter COVID-19 and we are sat­is­fied that the present mea­sures take this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion,” it ob­served.