Own­ers and op­er­a­tors of sports stores and gyms are pleased that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has made good on his bud­get promise to make sport­ing equip­ment ex­empt from cus­toms du­ty, VAT and the on­line pur­chase tax.

In a news re­lease on Thurs­day, the Min­is­ter con­firmed that the ex­emp­tion took ef­fect on New Year’s Day.

The re­lease stat­ed, “The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Ho­n­ourable Colm Im­bert, MP, wish­es to ad­vise that in keep­ing with the bud­get state­ment for the fi­nan­cial year 2025, there is a waiv­er of all cus­toms du­ty, val­ued added tax, and on­line pur­chase tax on the fol­low­ing, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2025.”

The news re­lease then out­lined an ex­ten­sive list of sport­ing equip­ment that have been made ex­empt from the three tax­es.

How­ev­er most of the own­ers and op­er­a­tors are un­able to say what im­pact the list­ing will have on their busi­ness­es, but felt it would help im­prove sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

Nyal Khan, di­rec­tor at Khan’s Poul­try and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Edan K Prop­er­ties, which op­er­ates Raw Fit­ness Health Club, was one who held that point of view.

“Ac­cord­ing to what I saw on the list, it is a lot of sport­ing goods. Which is on top of ex­er­cise equip­ment. So you have things like crick­et equip­ment, golf equip­ment bas­ket­ball, net­ball. So I know golf clubs and those kind of things will in­cur du­ties so it’s good that now that it will en­cour­age a lot of sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, or it makes sport­ing a lot a lit­tle more ac­ces­si­ble,” said Khan.

Raw Fit­ness has two lo­ca­tions cur­rent­ly in Gas­par­il­lo and Brent­wood re­spec­tive­ly, with both fea­tur­ing in­door fut­sal and crick­et fa­cil­i­ties. How­ev­er, Khan not­ed there were al­ready ex­emp­tions on most of the ex­er­cise equip­ment used at the gyms and the ex­emp­tion would not im­pact the op­er­a­tions at the gym sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

At Ken­ny’s Sports’ Port-of-Spain lo­ca­tion, the store’s man­ag­er con­firmed that the an­nounce­ment did prompt in­ter­est from the pub­lic at the store.

He said many po­ten­tial shop­pers, vis­it­ed the store on Fri­day, a day af­ter the Min­istry’s re­lease, seek­ing out re­duced prices of the sports equip­ment. How­ev­er, the man­ag­er ex­plained that the cur­rent stock at Ken­ny’s would have been sub­ject to the du­ties as the items were im­port­ed pri­or to Jan­u­ary 1, 2025.

As such, cus­tomers could not ex­pect re­duced prices im­me­di­ate­ly. How­ev­er, he ex­plained that prices would not drop un­til the stock im­port­ed with the du­ties still in place is sold.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the man­ag­er said it would be dif­fi­cult to cal­cu­late what the prices would be when the new stock ar­rives in the store.

How­ev­er, like Khan, the Ken­ny’s Sports’ man­ag­er said the move would like­ly in­crease sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try, which he felt would be a pos­i­tive step.

Dur­ing the 2025 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert said, “Those of us who take part in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties know how ex­pen­sive sport­ing gear can be. Ac­cord­ing­ly, in keep­ing with our pol­i­cy to en­cour­age healthy lifestyles, we shall in 2025 ex­empt all sport­ing equip­ment from tax­es and du­ty with the ex­cep­tion of cloth­ing. This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2025 and is ex­pect­ed to cost $20m.”

The ex­emp­tion on cloth­ing, how­ev­er meant that sports mem­o­ra­bil­ia store The Fan Zone would large­ly be left with­out a chance to see a de­cline in im­port prices.

The Fan Zone’s own­er Valenti­no Singh told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian he had yet to see the list, but did not ex­pect op­er­a­tions to be af­fect­ed as the store pri­mar­i­ly sells team kits and items con­nect­ed to spe­cif­ic teams in­stead of typ­i­cal or gener­ic sports equip­ment.

The ex­emp­tion on cloth­ing was one of the main cri­tiques fol­low­ing the ini­tial bud­get an­nounce­ment, as stake­hold­ers ar­gued then that cloth­ing for sport was large­ly the most com­mon re­cur­rent cost.

The items list­ed for the ex­emp­tion, ac­cord­ing to the re­lease from the Min­istry, in­clude sport­ing equip­ment such as trapeze bars and rings, trapeze rings, hor­i­zon­tal bars, par­al­lel bars, bal­ance beams,vault­ing hors­es, pom­mel hors­es, spring boards, wall bars, kip-prac­tice bars, hand grips and air tracks which can be close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the sport of gym­nas­tics.

Home gym buffs would pleased to know that items like in­di­an clubs, dumb­bells, bar­bells, ket­tle­bells, weight plates, sta­bil­i­ty balls, fit­ness balls, med­i­cine balls, chest ex­panders, jump balls with one or more han­dles de­signed for phys­i­cal ex­er­cis­es and hand grips were list­ed.

Those hop­ing to im­prove train­ing in track and field would al­so be en­cour­aged as start­ing blocks, com­pe­ti­tion hur­dles, agili­ty hur­dles, jump­ing stands, jump­ing stan­dards, vault­ing poles, land­ing pit pads, javelins,dis­cus­es, throw­ing ham­mers and putting shots are al­so among the items ex­empt­ed.

Al­so on the list were punch balls (speed bags), punch bags (punch­ing bags), box­ing rings and wrestling rings, skip­ping ropes de­signed for sports ac­tiv­i­ties and fit­ness class­es, foam rollers, coastal row­ers and sculls.

Cy­clists would be en­cour­aged by the in­clu­sion of cy­clo­com­put­ers on the list, a de­vice which is mount­ed on a bi­cy­cle that cal­cu­lates and dis­plays trip in­for­ma­tion, sim­i­lar to the in­stru­ments in the dash­board of a car.

As Khan men­tioned, golf clubs and oth­er golf equip­ment in­clud­ing clubs and golf balls were list­ed as well as re­lat­ed ac­ces­sories;

Ar­ti­cles and equip­ment for ta­ble-ten­nis, lawn ten­nis, bad­minton were al­so list­ed. in­flat­able soc­cer balls and ball pumps were al­so on the list as well as hock­ey sticks, base­ball bats, soft­ball bats, bas­ket­ball Nets, vol­ley­ball nets, bad­minton nets net­ball nets.

Fenc­ing and archery en­thu­si­asts will be pleased to know that fenc­ing foils, fenc­ing sabres, fenc­ing rapiers, fenc­ing epees, fenc­ing masks, fenc­ing breast­plates as well as archery bows, archery ar­rows, archery tar­gets, archery arm guards, archery T-squares and archery bow stringers are all list­ed.

Eques­tri­an equip­ment such as rid­ing-crops, eques­tri­an whips, eques­tri­an sad­dles and eques­tri­an bri­dles are al­so on the list.

Al­so re­ceiv­ing the tax ex­emp­tions are bas­ket­ball back­stops, bas­ket­ball back­boards, net­ball rings, net­ball goal posts, wa­ter po­lo goal posts, base­ball gloves, box­ing gloves, crick­et gloves and gloves used in com­bat sports such as mixed mar­tial arts, sam­bo, kick box­ing, taek­won­do and karate are al­so on the list of ex­emp­tions.

The ex­emp­tion was not on­ly for sport­ing goods, as Elec­tric Ve­hi­cle Charg­ers and Parts such as Elec­tric Ve­hi­cle Charg­ing Sta­tions/Charg­ers for a volt­age not ex­ceed­ing 1,000 V and Elec­tric Ve­hi­cle Charg­ing Sta­tions/Charg­ers for a volt­age ex­ceed­ing 1,000 V were al­so list­ed.

This came just un­der a month the af­ter launch of Go­Elec­tricTT, an elec­tric ve­hi­cle (EV) leas­ing and taxi ser­vice com­pa­ny found­ed by crick­eters Ke­iron Pol­lard and Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine.

The com­pa­ny was formed to fur­ther en­cour­age pri­vate sec­tor util­i­sa­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles.