GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy, a na­tion­al en­er­gy pol­i­cy, the strength­en­ing of the Fraud Squad and pri­or­i­ty for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute (NSI) and its re­source re­quire­ments are among the bud­get rec­om­men­da­tions made by Am­cham T&T.

The 27-page doc­u­ment was sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Fi­nance last Fri­day for con­sid­er­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Am­cham T&T, even with op­ti­mistic growth pro­jec­tions, sys­temic is­sues such as ris­ing crime, for­eign ex­change short­age, sup­ply chain bot­tle­necks and food se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ue to threat­en this na­tion's eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, the rate of re­cov­ery, and the stan­dard of liv­ing cit­i­zen­ry en­joys.

"There­fore, our eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy-mak­ing at this time must take an ap­proach that un­der­scores a mix­ture of pro­pos­als to ad­dress debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to boost the non-en­er­gy sec­tors, the ef­fec­tive­ness of tax col­lec­tion and in­cen­tives for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments across all sec­tors," the or­gan­i­sa­tion out­lined.

Re­gard­ing sug­ges­tions for stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic growth in the short to medi­um term, the busi­ness group rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment de­vel­op a pro­gres­sive eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment fund with an in­de­pen­dent board to mo­bilise pri­vate cap­i­tal through the pro­vi­sion of fu­ture tax cred­its (over a pe­ri­od of three to five years) for ex­pen­di­ture in this fund. It would be sim­i­lar to the art and cul­ture tax al­lowance or sport spon­sor­ship tax al­lowance.

Sug­ges­tions were al­so made re­gard­ing widen­ing the tax net by en­forc­ing the ex­ist­ing tax laws for non-com­pli­ant busi­ness­es.

Am­cham T&T is rec­om­mend­ing the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and fraud de­tec­tion tools and pro­fes­sion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tion bod­ies and as­so­ci­a­tions to iden­ti­fy busi­ness­es that are not com­pli­ant with the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

It al­so ad­vised there must be col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit and the use of tech­nol­o­gy such as a Ge­o­graph­ic In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (GIS) maps to cross ref­er­ence over­lay of pop­u­la­tion and build­ing da­ta, , and to bring more peo­ple in­to the tax net by De­cem­ber 2023. It must be made clear that no penal­ties for past pe­ri­ods will be ap­plied.

Na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy

An im­por­tant part of the coun­try’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney is en­sur­ing da­ta pri­va­cy and se­cu­ri­ty.

As the Gov­ern­ment moves to­wards digi­tis­ing process­es and records, there needs to be a cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy to en­sure that the da­ta gen­er­at­ed is kept se­cure and unau­tho­rized ac­cess is pre­vent­ed, said Am­cham T&T.

It not­ed that this should in­clude an up­dat­ed cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy to gov­ern how da­ta is col­lect­ed, used, stored, and se­cured, adding that this will al­so con­tribute to build­ing the pub­lic’s trust and in­creas­ing up­take and us­age of the digi­tised ser­vices avail­able.

Cou­pled with this should be the de­vel­op­ment of a spe­cif­ic reg­is­ter of the coun­try's crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture as­sets to en­sure plans for cy­ber re­silience are de­vel­oped. Ac­cord­ing to Am­cham T&T, this is based on the re­cent at­tacks on lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the or­gan­i­sa­tion sug­gest­ed the ap­point­ment of a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer in each pub­lic sec­tor di­vi­sion to col­lab­o­rate, im­ple­ment and re­port on the con­trols, poli­cies and process­es for cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

"This would al­so pro­vide a struc­ture for re­port­ing and ad­dress­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty risks and threats iden­ti­fied by em­ploy­ees of the pub­lic sec­tor and the users of the pub­lic ser­vices," Am­cham T&T added.

Na­tion­al en­er­gy pol­i­cy

On the is­sue of en­er­gy, AM­CHAM T&T said a na­tion­al com­pre­hen­sive en­er­gy pol­i­cy is nec­es­sary as this can max­imise pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty in the short term and pro­mote tran­si­tion to re­new­able and en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient prac­tices in the medi­um to short term.

Rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude mea­sures to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of oil re­sources, on and off­shore in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame, which should in­clude fur­ther in­cen­tivi­sa­tion of pri­vate cap­i­tal and part­ner­ships to sup­port de­vel­op­ment of re­sources held by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um; mea­sures to in­crease ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment work in shal­low wa­ter ma­tur­ing gas fields; mea­sures and in­cen­tives to in­crease ex­plo­ration in the deep­wa­ter and mea­sures to sup­port and pro­mote en­er­gy ser­vices as an ex­port prod­uct.

The pri­vate sec­tor body made rec­om­men­da­tions to en­sure T&T is po­si­tioned to be well placed in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion

It rec­om­mend­ed in­cen­tives for ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tors in the up­stream and down­stream to make in­vest­ments re­quired to re­duce emis­sions to cre­ate less car­bon-in­ten­sive en­er­gy ex­ports; es­tab­lish or par­tic­i­pate in a re­gion­al­ly recog­nised car­bon pric­ing/trad­ing scheme to in­cen­tivise in­vest­ment in low car­bon op­por­tu­ni­ties; es­tab­lish and staff an en­er­gy tran­si­tion au­thor­i­ty or arm of the Min­istry of En­er­gy to co­or­di­nate the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies re­quired to sup­port in­vest­ments in re­new­ables; a na­tion­al plan for the in­tro­duc­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cle (EVs) and the phas­ing out of in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine (ICE) ve­hi­cles over time.

Strength­en the Fraud Squad

AM­CHAM T&T al­so not­ed that it con­tin­ues to be con­cerned about the crime sit­u­a­tion, adding that this con­tin­ues to have grow­ing neg­a­tive im­pact on the busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties of its mem­ber com­pa­nies and cit­i­zens.

It urged that ad­dress­ing crime must be a pri­or­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment.

Re­gard­ing fraud, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said through the pro­vi­sion of train­ing and re­sources this can strength­en the Fraud Squad to im­prove the de­tec­tion rate.

In ad­di­tion, it rec­om­mend­ed strength­en­ing the sup­port­ing

leg­is­la­tion to en­able im­me­di­ate re­course for the vic­tims, par­tic­u­lar­ly for vic­tims of fraud be­low the $15,000 thresh­old.

In man­ag­ing white col­lar crime, it would be ben­e­fi­cial if a na­tion­al pol­i­cy is cre­at­ed and im­ple­ment­ed for both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor or­ga­ni­za­tions to adopt for whis­tle blow­ing.

Pri­or­i­tize the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute (NSI)

To at­tain bet­ter qual­i­ty da­ta sets on the na­tion­al econ­o­my and to im­prove the fre­quen­cy of such da­ta up­date/de­liv­ery the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) – and more point­ed­ly its full tran­si­tion to the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute (NSI) should be pri­or­i­tized, Am­cham T&T fur­ther not­ed in its rec­om­men­da­tion.

"Ac­cu­rate, rel­e­vant and re­al time da­ta on trade and the econ­o­my is very im­por­tant, not on­ly for Gov­ern­ment plan­ning but al­so busi­ness plan­ning. De­fi­cien­cies in da­ta col­lec­tion and re­port­ing were high­light­ed as one of the pri­ma­ry fac­tors af­fect­ing the coun­try’s cred­it rat­ing.

"The Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute is there­fore, a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the ef­fec­tive plan­ning for the fu­ture. The NSI, in our opin­ion, ought to bring bet­ter func­tion­ing to our na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem with mod­ern and im­proved da­ta col­lec­tion and re­port­ing," Am­cham T&T added.

It al­so ad­vised there be an “Ac­count­abil­i­ty Coun­cil” to en­gage and ac­count to the pub­lic and our ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers on the coun­try’s trans­for­ma­tion plan.

Trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts, al­though well-in­ten­tioned, are of­ten de­railed by var­i­ous road­blocks known or un­known at the time, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said, not­ing that with­out con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion, such road­blocks lead to un­man­aged ex­pec­ta­tions and bro­ken promis­es on a large scale.

Ac­count­abil­i­ty dri­ves fo­cus and there­fore, po­ten­tial for re­al ac­tion, Am­cham T&T em­pha­sised.

Ease of do­ing busi­ness

Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness con­tin­ues to be an area of dis­con­tent for many of the busi­ness peo­ple in T&T, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Am­cham T&T em­pha­sised that more must be done to im­prove the lo­cal busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, not on­ly to al­low com­pa­nies to ex­pand, but al­so it al­lows in­vestors to see the coun­try as at­trac­tive for their in­vest­ments.

It rec­om­mend that the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty be charged with Cus­toms re­form and fo­cus on key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors such as op­ti­mis­ing rev­enue col­lec­tion through the mod­erni­sa­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and best prac­tice stan­dards; im­prov­ing the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and well-be­ing of staff; im­prov­ing trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion through stream­lin­ing of cus­toms pro­ce­dures in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards in­clud­ing the Har­mo­nized Sys­tem Im­ple­men­ta­tion 2022 and in­creas­ing au­toma­tion and dig­i­tal­iza­tion for ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient cus­toms su­per­vi­sion.