While many in the food sec­tor are ea­ger and prepar­ing to open come Ju­ly 19, not every busi­ness that closed in May will be in a po­si­tion to re­open its doors.

Pe­nal Debe Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ram­per­sad Sieu­raj said that busi­ness­es have been bat­tered fi­nan­cial­ly and fears that many may close per­ma­nent­ly.

This is why he wants the gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er giv­ing those fac­ing per­ma­nent clo­sure a help­ing hand.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sieu­raj said Ju­ly 19 will be a “most wel­comed day” be­cause busi­ness­es have been clam­our­ing to re­open for the longest while now.

“How­ev­er, I can tell you for a fact that there are quite a num­ber of busi­ness­es in the Pe­nal-Debe area about 25 to 30 per cent of the busi­ness­es that have lit­er­al­ly closed down, prob­a­bly nev­er to re­open. Those that have had to pay rental and oth­er ex­pen­di­tures, oth­er over­head costs have not been able to meet them, es­pe­cial­ly busi­ness­es where the land­lords have not been le­nient with them. They, I ex­pect will not be able to re­open.”

Sieu­raj said many pro­pri­etors, es­pe­cial­ly those in the in­for­mal set­ting, could not ac­cess the gov­ern­ment’s loan fa­cil­i­ty be­cause they lack the re­quired doc­u­ments.

“The ones in the in­for­mal sec­tor will find it very dif­fi­cult to ac­cess those grants sim­ply be­cause of the con­di­tions that have been laid down, for ex­am­ple, the banks will need three years fi­nan­cial state­ments, a reg­is­tra­tion for BIR, NIB.”

He sug­gest­ed that gov­ern­ment find some mech­a­nism to make it more ac­ces­si­ble to them.

“The gov­ern­ment could pos­si­bly make it eas­i­er by ask­ing for the ba­sic re­quire­ments, that means to say that the busi­ness­es will have to go and reg­is­ter at the Board of In­land Rev­enue, the Board of In­land Rev­enue can then wave its re­quire­ment of five and six years tax re­turns. The Board of In­land Rev­enue could say file your tax­es for this year and on­wards. The Min­istry of Fi­nance could prob­a­bly make reg­u­la­tions to that ef­fect. The NIB could say okay maybe you have been in busi­ness for ten years but this is the re­quire­ment go­ing for­ward, so you bring them in­to the for­mal sec­tor and there­fore you then be able to re­cov­er ben­e­fits and tax­es in due course.”

Ed­u­ca­tion on vac­ci­na­tion need­ed

Mean­while, Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Mukesh Ram­s­ingh ex­pects 75 to 80 per cent of the food sec­tor to re­open.

“I know busi­ness­es that have to pay rent are un­der a lit­tle con­straint but I think most busi­ness­es would be able to open.” Asked when he hoped to see the re­stric­tions lift­ed on the oth­er busi­ness sec­tors, Ram­s­ingh said the gov­ern­ment is try­ing its best to open up based on the vac­ci­na­tion process.

“If the vac­ci­na­tion is ramped up in the next month or so as the Prime Min­is­ter right­ful­ly said, they will push to open more and more of the busi­ness sec­tor.”

Not­ing that the cham­ber’s build­ing will be used as a vac­ci­na­tion site from Fri­day, he said they are sup­port­ing the dri­ve to vac­ci­nate the work­force.

Ram­s­ingh said while legal­ly no one could be forced to take the vac­cine he is sug­gest­ing that every­one gets vac­ci­nat­ed. He said that’s the di­rec­tion the world is head­ing.

“I my­self is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and I have no is­sues and my fam­i­ly is vac­ci­nat­ed. We have no is­sues. Even based on trav­el­ling, it is go­ing to be that you have to be vac­ci­nat­ed now.”

How­ev­er, he said no one could be forced to take the vac­cine.

“There is a mas­sive cam­paign that is go­ing to be launched to ed­u­cate and ad­vise peo­ple about the vac­cine and to con­vince peo­ple to be vac­ci­nat­ed. I hope that those on the fence to be vac­ci­nat­ed gets on board be­cause that’s the on­ly way out of this right now,” he added.

Mean­while, Ar­gen­tine Am­bas­sador to Trinidad Marce­lo Suárez Salvia al­so com­ment­ed on the re­lax­ation of lock­down re­stric­tions in this coun­try on Twit­ter.

He post­ed, “I couldn’t have imag­ined that I would be so hap­py for TT’s Food Sec­tor peo­ple af­ter to­day’s PM@Kei­thRow­ley pos­i­tive an­nounce­ments. I’ve been ob­serv­ing your hard­ship & I wish you all a swift and smooth re­turn to busi­ness.”

The Am­bas­sador al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go on the progress the coun­try has made so far.

The gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ing an ad­di­tion­al ship­ment of 800,000 dos­es of Sinopharm vac­cines from Chi­na this week.