The pri­vate sec­tor wants an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment that is trans­par­ent and pre­dictable to op­er­ate in, says Tri­cia Coos­al who has been elect­ed for a sec­ond term as pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

Speak­ing dur­ing a we­bi­nar ti­tled, “Re­silience in Busi­ness” held yes­ter­day Coos­al ex­plained, “We are not seek­ing to cur­tail com­pe­ti­tion. How­ev­er, we want fair com­pe­ti­tion.

“We can cre­ate a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage that will al­low us to com­pete glob­al­ly if our re­gion is to op­er­ate op­ti­mal­ly in the truest sense of a sin­gle mar­ket with fac­tors in place such as free cir­cu­la­tion and con­tin­gent rights in place.”

Fur­ther, she said the TTMA would like a more con­ducive CSME, where the gains an­tic­i­pat­ed from the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas are not just lofty goals but those that are re­alised.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Coos­al said the TTMA has start­ed some work among pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies such as the Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion to move to­wards the planned com­mon mar­ket to the ben­e­fit of all.

“The TTMA will con­tin­ue to work in re­mov­ing the ob­sta­cles that cur­tail the deep­en­ing of the CSME,” she added.

Re­gard­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ad­vo­ca­cy con­cerns Coos­al said the TTMA will be press­ing ahead by work­ing with the gov­ern­ment to im­prove the VAT re­funds frame­work and ex­emp­tion of prop­er­ty tax for plant and ma­chin­ery.

Re­fer­ring to oth­er ar­eas and leg­isla­tive amend­ments that would play a crit­i­cal role for ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T, Coos­al said the TTMA has a frame­work for close­ly mon­i­tor­ing con­cerns from a cross-sec­tion of its mem­bers.

She out­lined that ar­eas in­clude Gov­ern­ment Pro­cure­ment Leg­is­la­tion, Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill, Front of Pack La­belling and piv­ot­ing to a greater dig­i­talised en­vi­ron­ment that would im­prove busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Al­so, speak­ing was Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who ap­plaud­ed the hard work and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTMA and the Min­istry, which has re­sult­ed in a growth in 2021 rel­a­tive to 2020 of 28 per cent in the food and bev­er­age sec­tor and a 36 per cent in­crease in plas­tic ex­ports.

The min­is­ter al­so gave her com­mit­ment to work­ing with the TTMA to cre­ate a fa­cil­i­tat­ing en­vi­ron­ment and en­sure that T&T builds on the al­ready con­ducive re­la­tion­ships, not on­ly be­tween T&T and Guyana but the wider Caribbean.

Gopee-Scoon said the min­istry is work­ing to re­solve trad­ing is­sues bi­lat­er­al­ly with Ja­maica and an­tic­i­pates that a sim­i­lar mod­el would be rolled out on a bi­lat­er­al lev­el with Guyana and all oth­er trad­ing part­ners in Cari­com.

Rafeek Khan, pres­i­dent of the Guyana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, al­so not­ed that the pri­vate sec­tor must work to­ward build­ing on the ex­ist­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions and fur­ther co­op­er­a­tion to al­low providers of goods and ser­vices to pros­per.

“This would on­ly re­dound to the ben­e­fits of our re­spec­tive coun­tries, the pub­lic sec­tor in both coun­tries and among all Cari­com mem­bers must work to re­solve ex­ist­ing trad­ing chal­lenges to al­low pri­vate op­er­a­tions to sur­vive and ma­ture with­in the Cari­com frame­work, while al­low­ing them to be com­pet­i­tive in the wider glob­al eco­nom­ic space,” Khan added.