Two of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers are call­ing for a bud­get with a fo­cus on sta­bil­i­ty and im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce ((TTCIC) said “Com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and fac­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, the Cham­ber would ex­pect that the up­com­ing Na­tion­al Bud­get places em­pha­sis on eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, sta­bil­i­ty and growth.”

The TTCIC al­so hoped for pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives to at­tract lo­cal and for­eign in­vest­ment in the up­com­ing bud­get.

The Cham­ber al­so called for an im­prove­ment in the ease of do­ing busi­ness through full au­toma­tion of Cus­toms process­es as well as the ac­cel­er­a­tion of the digi­ti­sa­tion ef­forts across the en­tire pub­lic sec­tor. Ex­pan­sion of the e-tax pay­ment fa­cil­i­ty to al­low for on­line pay­ments un­der TT$100,000 and a more ef­fi­cient Vat re­fund sys­tem.

TTCIC told the Busi­ness Guardian that it al­so hoped the pre­sen­ta­tion from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would bring for­ward the im­ple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions made by the An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Task Force.

“This is nec­es­sary to pro­tect le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es and con­sumers,” Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley said.

The Cham­ber al­so called for more to in­cen­tivise en­tre­pre­neur­ship and Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of ac­cess­ing cap­i­tal.

“We note that the Gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed the SME Loan Guar­an­tee which was very well sub­scribed fol­low­ing the re­vi­sion of the cri­te­ria in 2021. Go­ing for­ward we rec­om­mend that the guar­an­tee sup­port be tar­get­ed to loans spe­cif­ic to digi­ti­sa­tion, ICT up­dates and in­no­va­tion,” the Cham­ber said.

A call was al­so made to boost the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor by of­fer­ing a 50% dis­count on the use of State Fa­cil­i­ties/venues for cul­tur­al events and fetes un­til the end of 2023 to help the sec­tor re­cov­er from the loss­es in­curred dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The Cham­ber al­so urged for more part­ner­ships with the pri­vate sec­tor, as it not­ed “the events and Car­ni­val bands ex­e­cut­ed by the pri­vate pro­mot­ers have gen­er­at­ed high de­mand by tourists and gen­er­ates for­eign ex­change.”

Ac­cord­ing to the pri­vate sec­tor body, “Met­rics re­lat­ed to the de­vel­op­ment of the Car­ni­val prod­uct should be es­tab­lished for the use of the funds.”

The cham­ber al­so looked to the Trinidad And To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion with the aim of im­prov­ing tax­pay­er com­pli­ance and min­imis­ing rev­enue leak­age.

Pash­ley said, “The TTRA is de­signed to pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in rev­enue col­lec­tion to any Ad­min­is­tra­tion in Gov­ern­ment, in the bil­lions of dol­lars. Pri­or­i­ty must be placed on ref­or­ma­tion of the tax ad­min­is­tra­tion sys­tem to achieve eq­ui­ty in the tax net.”

The cham­ber ar­gued that the Prop­er­ty Tax be re­vised. It said, “A re­vi­sion of the six (6) per cent tax on in­dus­tri­al prop­er­ties to ap­ply strict­ly to phys­i­cal prop­er­ty and not in­stalled cost of plant, ma­chin­ery and equip­ment in­side or out­side. To in­tro­duce a top line tax on busi­ness­es’ rev­enues will be­come a se­ri­ous dis­in­cen­tive for fur­ther in­vest­ment in a time when the em­pha­sis is to cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness growth.”

It al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the Green Fund, which has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed a bal­ance near­ing TT$8 bil­lion, be utilised to pro­vide seed cap­i­tal or grants to start-ups and SME’s whose busi­ness­es con­tribute to a clean­er sus­tain­able en­vi­ron­ment.

The Cham­ber point­ed out that both the Unit­ed King­dom and Guyana have used sim­i­lar “Green Funds” to as­sist start-ups.

CEO of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad & To­ba­go Ni­rad Tewarie said he hoped the up­com­ing bud­get “has clear ob­jec­tives, progress re­ports on pre­vi­ous an­nounce­ments and poli­cies to fa­cil­i­tate an at­trac­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fo­cussing on ef­fi­cien­cy gains and pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties that would im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for all cit­i­zens.”

Tewarie not­ed AM­CHAM sent bud­get rec­om­men­da­tions to the Min­istry of Fi­nance in Ju­ly 2022.

In those rec­om­men­da­tions, the ac­cel­er­a­tion of the Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion agen­da was em­pha­sised as AM­CHAM said it was key to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and growth.

Tewarie told the BG, “This will re­quire im­ple­ment­ing the dig­i­tal pol­i­cy and da­ta in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty frame­work to en­hance in­no­va­tion and de­vel­op so­lu­tions to sup­port cit­i­zen ser­vice de­liv­ery. We are aware that the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion has been work­ing to in­crease its in­ter­nal ca­pac­i­ty and set the stage for what we hope will be a year of de­liv­ery, as the Gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly com­mit­ted to these ini­tia­tives.”

He added, “We al­so need to pri­ori­tise the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute (NSI) and its re­source re­quire­ments to fill our da­ta col­lec­tion gaps and im­prove de­ci­sion mak­ing around ma­jor eco­nom­ic is­sues. The Prime Min­is­ter re­cent­ly an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment will be lay­ing the NSI Bill in Par­lia­ment in this ses­sion. We urge the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port it, and, if there are de­fi­cien­cies in their view, to clear­ly iden­ti­fy them so that there can be a meet­ing of the minds to pass the best leg­is­la­tion. Should the lat­ter be the case, we hope that the Gov­ern­ment will mean­ing­ful­ly en­gage the Op­po­si­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers to come to con­sen­sus so that the NSI can be up and run­ning in the first half of 2023.”

AM­CHAM al­so high­light­ed that more should be done to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Tewarie said, “We must im­ple­ment a ful­ly au­to­mat­ed cus­toms process by en­sur­ing a func­tion­al in­te­gra­tion with TTBi­zLink, in­creas­ing the use of the ASY­CU­DA plat­form, re­vamp­ing cus­toms hours, in­clud­ing tack­ling un­nec­es­sary over­time and re­design­ing lo­ca­tions to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy at the air­ports and sea­ports.”