While AM­CHAM T&T says it ac­knowl­edges sev­er­al ini­tia­tives – new and ex­ist­ing – in yes­ter­day’s Bud­get that are geared to­ward stim­u­lat­ing the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, it has some con­cerns.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said, “We heard about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute (NSI) with­out a firm time­line. We look for­ward to the es­tab­lish­ment of the NSI this year as it has been fea­tured in pre­vi­ous bud­gets but is yet to come to fruition. The es­tab­lish­ment and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the NSI is nec­es­sary if the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about us­ing da­ta to ef­fec­tive­ly de­sign and im­ple­ment pol­i­cy.”

How­ev­er, AM­CHAM T&T not­ed that the Bud­get was de­liv­ered against the back­drop of a se­ries of pos­i­tive an­nounce­ments in the up­stream en­er­gy sec­tor over the past month.

“The at­tempts to pro­vide more in­cen­tives to the up­stream en­er­gy sec­tor and in­cen­tivise small pool de­vel­op­ment are wel­come. A re-fo­cus on tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al train­ing, digi­ti­sa­tion, and en­hanc­ing Fin­Tech adop­tion are all ex­treme­ly im­por­tant,” it not­ed.

But AM­CHAM T&T stat­ed it was hap­py to see the na­tion­al e-ID and da­ta in­ter-op­er­abil­i­ty frame­work re­main­ing high on the Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da.

“We know these are un­der­way and look for­ward to a full roll­out this year,” it added.

It said it al­so sup­port­ed the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage adding that it looks for­ward to more fa­cil­i­ta­tion of busi­ness and re­duc­tion of bu­reau­cra­cy to en­able small and medi­um busi­ness­es in par­tic­u­lar to grow and there­fore be able to sus­tain the in­crease.