Pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Tri­cia Coos­al has com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment in en­sur­ing the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to sta­bilise and grow fol­low­ing the im­pact of COVID-19 and the on­go­ing Rus­sia-Ukraine war.

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Coos­al not­ed the mea­sures out­lined say­ing, “The im­por­tance of en­sur­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness was once again stressed by the min­is­ter via the pledge of dig­i­ti­za­tion though the strength­en­ing of the Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the elec­tron­ic fund trans­fer frame­work to al­low busi­ness­es to make pay­ments to the Gov­ern­ment by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty…these are need­ed and wel­comed ini­tia­tives.”

Ac­cord­ing to Coos­al the TTMA al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for a more ef­fi­cient tax col­lect­ing mech­a­nism, stress­ing the im­por­tance of widen­ing the tax net as op­posed to fur­ther bur­den­ing the al­ready com­pli­ant pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try.

“The TTMA looks for­ward to op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty in 2023 and an­tic­i­pates this fa­cil­i­ty would al­low for greater ef­fi­cien­cies in tax col­lec­tion,” Coos­al ex­plained.

Re­gard­ing oth­er is­sues she said the TTMA looks for­ward to phase three of the “mod­ern state-of-the-art” in­dus­tri­al Phoenix Park.

“The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to sig­nal the trust it places in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to con­tin­ue with­in a frame­work or pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship to lead the charge on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my as ev­i­dent by the 17 per cent in­crease in ex­ports.

“We look for­ward to the specifics of the EX­IM fa­cil­i­ty, which has worked re­al­ly well for the SME ex­porters among our mem­ber­ship,” Coos­al added.

TTMA added it al­so sup­ports Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to the CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment goal to re­duce the re­gion’s ex­port bill by 25 per cent by 2025 via the al­lo­ca­tion of $300 mil­lion in­to agri­cul­ture and in­fra­struc­ture pro­grammes to as­sist with food se­cu­ri­ty and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the agro-pro­cess­ing, a sub-sec­tor of man­u­fac­tur­ing.