GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says while it un­der­stands the need to lim­it the fu­el sub­sidy, it is con­cerned about the im­pact this will have on in­fla­tion and the pop­u­la­tion at this time.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day the Cham­ber said while Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed an “op­ti­mistic” 2023 na­tion­al bud­get, it how­ev­er, re­mains re­served about sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts on the econ­o­my.

The Cham­ber ex­plained that de­spite the on­go­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges posed by in­fla­tion, which have been height­ened with the on­go­ing Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict and geo-po­lit­i­cal ten­sions, the wind­fall rev­enue has seen the bud­get deficit re­duced to $2 bil­lion, from $9 bil­lion in 2022.

“The es­ti­mat­ed $8 bil­lion rev­enue was de­rived from the in­creas­es to prices of T&T’s main ex­port com­modi­ties of oil, nat­ur­al gas, and am­mo­nia.

“Giv­en the rea­son­able bench­mark for en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices, sev­er­al ini­tia­tives out­lined in the bud­get such as cash­less trans­ac­tions, in­fra­struc­ture projects, health, hous­ing, in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy and ed­u­ca­tion kept in line with the bud­get’s theme ‘Tenac­i­ty and Sta­bil­i­ty in the face of glob­al chal­lenges’.

“Notwith­stand­ing this, the min­is­ter an­nounced an in­crease in fu­el prices,” the Cham­ber ex­plained.

In its re­sponse the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion said it is al­so not par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the in­crease in fu­el prices at this time.

“We have been warned by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) to man­age in­fla­tion. The knock on ef­fect of this will lead to in­creased prices to con­sumers,” the as­so­ci­a­tion said.

It added it is al­so “a bit con­cerned” with the pro­jec­tion of the oil price at $92.50 per bar­rel say­ing, “We need to be care­ful to not over stretch the pro­jec­tion of the coun­try’s rev­enue.”

On oth­er ar­eas of con­cern the as­so­ci­a­tion said crime re­mains out of hand, not­ing it would have liked to see a greater com­mit­ment in the form of in­vest­ment in train­ing and Closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) in­fra­struc­ture na­tion­al­ly.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion said it did not see any com­mit­ment to deal with the in­for­mal sec­tor for NIB.

“This sec­tor of the econ­o­my is con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing ig­nored. We al­so be­lieve in­creas­ing the VAT thresh­old can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive from the point that the strat­e­gy should be to cap­ture more of the in­for­mal sec­tor. We need to pay at­ten­tion to this is­sue,” the as­so­ci­a­tion added.

To bol­ster ex­ports, it added the in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme should be across all in­dus­tries and not on­ly food and bev­er­age.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion said more at­ten­tion should be paid to VAT re­turns adding, “We ap­pre­ci­ate the $4 bil­lion pay­out in 2022 but more still can be done.”