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Wednesday, April 16, 2025

T&T Chamber praises budget outlook

by

197 days ago
20241001
Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce Chief Executive Officer Vashti Guyadeen

Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce Chief Executive Officer Vashti Guyadeen

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) says the fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion to­ward com­bat­ing crime has been “high and ris­ing” not­ing that the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion re­mains alarm­ing.

As a re­sult, the Cham­ber is call­ing for more col­lab­o­ra­tion with pri­vate sec­tor to ef­fec­tive­ly ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion, as it re­spond­ed to Mon­day’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Re­gard­ing oth­er mea­sures, the cham­ber said it is pleased with plans to re­duce food im­port de­pen­den­cy, such as the in­tro­duc­tion of a food se­cu­ri­ty and prices com­mit­tee; the in­tro­duc­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy and cli­mate smart tech­nolo­gies to re­duce wa­ter wastage and in­crease crop yields; dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to pro­mote da­ta shar­ing and knowl­edge trans­fer; and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of arable lands to tar­get high val­ue growth sub­sec­tors.

The Cham­ber added that it was al­so heart­ened by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s promise of a forth­com­ing re­view to clear­ly de­fine the process for ac­cess­ing agri­cul­tur­al tax ex­emp­tions.

The cham­ber said it was elat­ed that VAT re­funds will be is­sued to small and medi­um busi­ness­es by De­cem­ber 31, 2024 and that in­ter­est-bear­ing bonds up to the val­ue of $3 bil­lion will al­so be is­sued by Jan­u­ary 2025.

The pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion added that it al­so sup­port­ed the holis­tic, da­ta-dri­ven tax­pay­er ap­proach, ac­cess to on­line pay­ments and user-friend­ly tax­pay­er ser­vices that the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) is ex­pect­ed to in­tro­duce.

“Our hope is that this im­ple­men­ta­tion will elim­i­nate the cur­rent ef­fi­cien­cy lim­i­ta­tions that cur­rent­ly ex­ist in pro­cess­ing both Cus­toms and Ex­cise and In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion trans­ac­tions, in­so­far as it cur­rent­ly im­pacts on the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“We view the thrust to­ward a dig­i­tal econ­o­my as a crit­i­cal node in our over­all eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. The mea­sures out­lined by the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter, through the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC), to ful­ly digi­tise key gov­ern­ment ser­vices is com­mend­able,” the Cham­ber said. It added that the is­sues of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and over­all na­tion­al safe­ty have re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion from the T&T Cham­ber, giv­en the im­pact on both the in­vest­ment cli­mate and the op­er­a­tions of the na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The Min­is­ter’s stat­ed in­ten­tion to is­sue a man­date that all in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies re­mit tax pay­ments in USD, will boost for­eign ex­change rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and as­sist in mit­i­gat­ing rev­enue short­ages dur­ing pe­ri­ods of de­pressed hy­dro­car­bon prices, said the busi­ness group.

The di­vest­ment of key as­sets ref­er­enced by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will cre­ate new em­ploy­ment and rev­enue gen­er­a­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties, it said.

“We look for­ward to the pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships be­ing pro­posed. While the over­all out­look seems pos­i­tive, the ef­fi­cient im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mea­sures to achieve the de­sired re­sults is crit­i­cal,” said the Cham­ber.


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