GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

With weeks away from the bud­get, con­cerns were again raised about the bil­lions owed by Gov­ern­ment in VAT re­funds to busi­ness­es, some of which are strug­gling to sur­vive amidst eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber Gabriel Faria while speak­ing at a sem­i­nar ti­tled, Piv­ot­ing the Caribbean Econ­o­my, said man­u­fac­tur­ers which are ex­port­ing are es­pe­cial­ly pe­nalised.

“Every cy­cle there are VAT re­funds. We have writ­ten the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. We have begged to do some­thing to sup­port and we need to un­der­stand that the bud­get is not a strat­e­gy plan. It is a book­keep­er’s doc­u­ment,” Faria said.

He said there­fore, there is a “book­keep­er” who is try­ing to bal­ance cer­tain things but which are not based on a strate­gic aim.

“And I don’t think the book­keep­er has tak­en any strate­gic plans. I need some­body to tell me if he will,” Faria said, adding that the coun­try, in­stead, ends up with a book­keep­er’s doc­u­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Faria if cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and ex­ports are to be in­creased then the bur­geon­ing prob­lem of VAT re­funds must be ad­dressed.

“We are dis­in­cen­tivis­ing the same thing we want to ac­com­plish,” Faria main­tained.

Re­gard­ing the con­tentious is­sue of prop­er­ty tax, Faria said while busi­ness­es are will­ing to pay their dues, levy­ing such tax­es on equip­ment is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

Faria said he will con­tin­ue to bring such is­sues to the fore even though he knows no one will lis­ten.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cham­ber CEO all busi­ness, whether big or small, in T&T adds val­ue to the coun­try’s fis­cal purse, not­ing that there will be those which will ex­cel de­spite the dif­fi­cul­ties.

He said if there are en­ti­ties which can­not sur­vive in T&T, there are oth­er op­tions in­clud­ing ex­plor­ing the CSME.

“We can sit here and be­come vic­tims of that pre­dictable out­come or we can de­ter­mine that we are go­ing to chart our course and that can be chang­ing the busi­ness that you do or chang­ing where you do your busi­ness or chang­ing how you do your busi­ness,” Faria ex­plained.

He added that busi­ness­es will go where they and their cap­i­tal are wel­comed and where they can get the best re­turn on it.

How­ev­er, he said if peo­ple ven­ture in­to busi­ness to earn for­eign ex­change then they are do­ing so “in the wrong coun­try” and there­fore ought to look else­where.

Not­ing that he has worked in the Cham­ber for over five years and de­spite his rec­om­men­da­tions Gov­ern­ment, “does not lis­ten.”

“We have asked the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, and he is not go­ing to lis­ten but we will still ask him, to cre­ate an in­cen­tive to mo­bilise all the mon­ey sit­ting in the banks and to cre­ate a tax in­cen­tive so that peo­ple can in­vest in en­tre­pre­neurs and get a tax ben­e­fit,” Faria added.

The event was host­ed yes­ter­day by the Lok Jack GSB Busi­ness.